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This is the review topic for Annus Mirabilis: The Year of the Miracle. As per Epics rules, all discussion of the epic goes here, etc.CONTENTSI. Force MajeureII. Malum in SeIII. Cacoëthes ScribendiIV. Ignis FatuusV. Hic JacetVI. Fons et OrigoVII. Ultima ThuleVIII. Primus Inter ParesIX. Bête BlancheX. Feu de JoieXI. Mise-en-Scène
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-----The island of Zakaz was indeed a lonely and foreboding place to go about your existence. Even for the most peaceful and harmless of beings, there wasn’t much you could do to alter the constant warfare between the Skakdi warlords, who hoarded what they could and destroyed what they couldn’t. After countless and endless years of warfare, it was impossible to think about life as anything else, anything but the constant state of turmoil for which the island had, for so long, been constantly embroiled – for that manner of life was the only life that any of them ever really knew, or even cared to know.-----No one but a delusional pacifist would go about their business on the island unarmed and unprepared for involvement in some sort of fight. In fact, one would have to be pretty insane to visit the island at all, for there was nothing even remotely palmary to be found on Zakaz. It was an annular wasteland, considered to be a long-lost cause by anyone who knew more about it than simply that it existed.-----On this particular section of Zakaz, towards the northern area, a green Skakdi known as Qazror walked along warily. His Zoom Vision had long since informed him that there weren’t any life forms in the immediate region – this was an excuse to relax, but he wouldn’t. There was probably a skirmish going on farther to the south, as two factions had been fighting over that useless patch of arid waste for months. Besides, on Zakaz, being on the alert was always a good precautionary move.-----Curious about the state of the southern fighting, he zoomed in to the area. To his surprise, he saw no battle. Instead, he caught sight of a group of Skakdi working together, building some kind of tower. One of the factions down there must have won – not like that fact was important or anything. Qazror had no real stake in the matter, and while he could be as belligerent as the next Skakdi, today he didn’t feel quite the same. He felt positively beaten at the notion of war, even daring to question for a minute why there was so much of it on his barren island in the first place.-----He shook off those ridiculous notions. For the first time in his life, he didn’t feel like fighting, and he didn’t really like that feeling. It was just too different.-----Presently, he realized that he had stopped in his tracks. In the past, he really hadn’t been much of a thinker or ponderer. It didn’t matter to him what his intelligence was, as independent thought had never been highly valued by anyone he had ever dealt with – but this was bothering him. Why did he feel so apathetic about violence all of the sudden?-----His train of thought deserted him as his brain refocused on what his eyes were seeing, which was a small and tender leaf singularly sprouting from the cracked and worn soil.-----A leaf?-----Qazror could not remember the last time there was plant life on Zakaz. If any Skakdi did, it had to be one of the warlords … Nektann, possibly, if any of them. Yet here was life, sprouting anew amidst all odds set against it. The very tract of land in which the plant had taken root had been burned and destroyed uncountable times, yet somehow, this resilient plant had made it through.-----He leaned down, prostrating himself on the tired earth. It was a leaf, all right, attached to a tiny stem and extending into the cracked ground. There were actually two leaves … on two stems. The smaller of the two was growing up right behind the first, larger one.-----Zooming in, Qazror studied the plants … or at least he tried to. Even if the plant’s movements in the windless ambience of the always-foul air were not visible to the unaided eye, zooming in showed that the plant was growing – and fairly fast, at that.-----Qazror was not a stupid Skakdi. He knew how the politics of warlord rule operated, at least on a base level. How much one controlled, and how powerful what you controlled was valued by everyone else, was the key to the fleeting success and power one could accrue on Zakaz. There was life here, and it would be useful to control, especially if the twin saplings continued to be as fecund as they were right now.-----Spending a little more time admiring the two growing plants, he was startled when he heard a small snap behind him. Always on the alert, he jumped up and whirled around to face the threat …-----But there was no threat. The sound was part of the rapid growth of a tree that had sprouted and matured behind his back in mere minutes. For some reason, Qazror was not very surprised at this, though he thought that he probably should be.-----He devoted the next five minutes to studying the bark of the tree. He could not possibly identify it, and he innately knew that his own attempts to classify it were futile. Frustrated at this, he turned his body and his focus back to the two plants.-----There were two of them no longer. They were only the first two members of an entire swath of flowering plants whose sweet and refreshing scents filled the rotten air with sweet odors that had not been sniffed on Zakaz in uncountable years. Its magnificence and miraculousness was even more overwhelming than its sudden appearance. Qazror felt stunned by this sudden turn of events, but he could not lose sight of what this lucky break might mean for him and for his future.-----As night began to fall, the trees and plants multiplied further. In a few, mere hours, the landscape was terraformed, using not the powers of its denizens, but by its own miraculous means. A beautiful grove of trees extended outwards behind Qazror, dipping branches producing a tangy orange fruit. In front of him, a picturesque meadow glowed, shimmering peacefully in the soft twilight sky.-----As he began to lay his head down to sleep, Qazror could not help but wonder at the astonishing miracle that had unfolded around of him, and dream at how he could use it to his advantage, to build his own future around that which already existed, rather than recreate his unchangeable and unalterable society for his own idealistic but foolish goals, which would be impossible. Instead, he decided to himself that this was the first step in his new future.-----Yes, he would put together his own empire on Zakaz, and he wouldn’t bother to concern himself with the activities of his inevitable rivals. ----- Review
