Trope-a-Day: Order Versus Chaos

Order Versus Chaos: Played straight, by both religion (the Church of the Flame’s Big Bad is entropy and chaos) and state (the Imperial motto is “Order, Progress, Liberty”).  Subverted in both cases inasmuch as they’re very clear that it’s supposed to be emergent order (which includes several of those things the original trope lists under Chaos, like free will, creativity, and individualism, and excludes their opposing counterparts) – because the creation of order is too important to be left to planners.

Purpose

Miríë.  Idaharis.  Jírileth.  Order, progress, liberty.  These are the principles to which we have dedicated ourselves, we of this new-forged Empire. ”

”But not the externally-imposed kórasmiríë of the dark times before the Drowning, nor that of the benighted lands beyond the mountains and the ocean. We believe that múratmiríë – cooperation – is superior to autarky, tyranny, or strife, that men of every kind may come together unforced to order their affairs for the greatest good of each, and thus of all. Our Empire is but one of these associations, one dedicated to the defense of this principle, and in whose shadow many more may grow.”

”In our new common language, as in my own native tongue, idaharis means ’charging the future’, and that is what we shall do. The challenge is before us, and we shall rise to it. The secrets of the world are before us for the taking, the eikones point the way, and we shall not rest until the promise of idaharis is fulfilled – that every day shall dawn brighter and better than the day before.”

Jírileth is the prize and the cost of our order and our progress. In its name our ancestors cast down tyrants great; in its name, we shall cast down tyrants petty, too, and carry their work abroad until there exists no place under heaven where one man may command another, nor need any fear for him and his, and all may freely pursue their qalasír as they will.”

”And as that work is done, we shall seize freedom, too, from all else that dares constrain us. By the cunning of our minds and the skill of our hands, by the wisdom of our libraries and the wealth of our storehouses we shall free ourselves from labor and lack, from the weaknesses of the flesh and the chance of mortality, from every insufficiency, and even from the very circles of the world. And we never again shall be bound.”

”For we are the eldrae, the doers of deeds and makers of works, and bold enough to voyage wherever dreams have gone before.”

– Seledíë I, first Empress of the Star, excerpted from her first speech from the Throne