The Revolt of the Eight

The Revolt of the Eight was an assassination attempt in 3125 APC against the mage Jermon Verelfeth by a number of former members of the proscribed Council of Eight from the city of Zalgurim. The merchant families attempted a coup to regain the political power their class had lost to the despotic magician.   The assassination failed and as a consequence, a number of the rebels were executed, leaving both the Copolleme Family and the Giconi Family without the respective heads of their families.  

The Motivation

  Jermon Verelfeth had never been a popular leader in Zalgurim and there was long term resentment of his authority which had built up over many years amongst the aristocrats and business leaders who felt their power diminished in the absence of the Council of Eight.   Even so, the move against him came very late after he had been in power for over seventy years. The plotters were a generation or more removed from the councillors who had succumbed to Jermon Verelfeth's initial take over, when he was a young man in 3053 APC. Many of them were affluent with much to lose and seemingly little to gain from risking a coup. Certainly, with the benefit of hindsight we can see that the revolt of the eight was a disastrous decision. In only three more years, Jermon Verelfeth would die of natural causes, allowing the Council of Eight to regain everything it had lost in a painless transition of power. So what provoked the plotters to their premature action?   It wasn't about economics or politics, it was about public safety. In his last years Jermon became increasingly autocratic and unpredictable. This was almost certainly the result of his addiction to Synaptic Unbinding Potion and the cumulative effects of frequent usage. Random spasmodic attacks based on no more than paranoia or idle ill conceived temporary fits of pique had resulted in the deaths of seven innocent citizens within the space of five months in 3124 and early 3125. It was believed that the mage was losing his previously acute mental faculties and was weaker than he had ever been. The idea that a surprise stroke could assassinate him, led to an active plot to do just that.  

The Attempted Assassination

  By 3125 Jermon Verelfeth was in the grip of advanced Synaptic Unbinding Potion addiction. This was a condition which Tobias Golkin had famously warned about in his polemic Synaptic Suicide : The Case Against Synaptic Unbinding Potion but in this case as in many others that would come later, his warnings went unheeded.   The plotters decided that the mage's drugs could offer a means to destroy him. Jermon had a private supply route which brought his Synaptic Unbinding Potion from Quarowl via airship to Sunrock, then east overland and finally down the Meldine river to Zalgurim. Lord Vittorio Copolleme who owned the Meldine River Company, learned from his captains and from observations at the city docks, which secret shipping was providing the conduit. Feirance Giconi, used his contacts in the alchemical trade to source an additive that could be cut with the pure drug and would poison the recipient, making them confused and drowsy. To ensure the kill succeeded, a disloyal guard, Dom Pteld, was recruited to observe and to strike with a poisoned blade when he saw the mage had been weakened.   On 11th Doloph, 3125 APC, observing his master stumbling and cursing in his study in the early evening, Dom Pteld drew his dagger and attacked the mage. Unfortunately for him (and for the aristocrats who had recruited him) he'd made a major mistake.     The delivery of the adulterated Synaptic Unbinding Potion, which the guard thought his master had now consumed, had in fact been delayed, an unlucky circumstance which the plotters failed to communicate with their assassin. Jermon Verelfeth was not poisoned, he was merely drunk and the threat to his life when his incautious assailant failed to strike with sufficient speed and resolution sobered him up immediately. Nor was the mage so weak as he sometimes appeared. Not only was he able to defend himself but before he killed Dom Pteld, he interrogated him with sufficient effectiveness to uncover the essence of the plot against him.  

Short Term Consequences

  The failure of the assassination led to immediate reprisals. Jermon Verelfeth had sufficient information to trace the supply of corrupt Synaptic Unbinding Potion and to identify the conspirators. By the 13th of Doloph, the rebels were arrested and imprisoned. It was only a little over two weeks before a show trial was held on the 6th of Kerax. In that short space of time, friends and sympathisers promised to protect the children of the accused, since the Copolleme Family and the Giconi Family both had young offspring and although he had no direct evidence against them, Jermon Verelfeth included their mothers in his haul of prisoners.   Wills were drawn up in haste and sworn before what remained of the Council of Eight, because no one expected mercy or a less than fatal outcome for the accused. And with good reason.     On 7th Kerax, 3125 APC, Jermon Verelfeth himself, publically executed those he accused of being behind the assassination plot. This was known as the Execution of the Eight, although in fact there were only four individuals involved (they were just secret members of the proscribed Council of Eight).   The young daughters of the Lord Vittorio Copolleme and Lady Marcella Copolleme, Alicia and Beatrice were both less than ten years old. Acting on the instruction of their deceased parents, family friends spirited them away to the Lake Chapel of the Way of the Harmonic Path to conceal them from the unpredictable and potentially still vengeful Jermon Verelfeth. Even when he died in 3128, only three years later, the priestesses of the Harmonic Order continued to raise the girls until they reached the age of twenty seven, when the terms of their parents' joint will, permitted them to gain some measure of adult independence.   Their cousin, Amoretta Giconi, who was in between the ages of the two Copolleme sisters, was sent to live with one of the servants of the Giconi Family, the widowed Polla Coretti, who had been her nanny.  

Long Term Consequences

  After the death of Jermon Verelfeth in 3128 APC, as a result of an overdose of Synaptic Unbinding Potion, the Council of Eight assumed control of Zalgurim again, but it was missing adult representatives of two of its most prominent families. The children grew up under their respective guardians, awaiting age specific freedoms which would unlock priviliges at the time and of the type that their parents had decreed.   For the Copolleme sisters, a multi stage process has been defined for them. When they reached the age of twenty seven, they could leave the Lake Chapel and begin the process of integration with wider Zalgurim society. The Copolleme Corporation had been placed under the stewardship of a hastily arranged trust chaired by Marakan Domolu. The trust would support their move back into the old family house and sponsor their further education with some travelling and more advanced civic and economic studies.     When Alicia Copolleme reached the age of thirty three in 3151 APC, she was considered old enough to regain the family voting right on the Council of Eight. Perhaps counterintuitively, or perhaps not, Lord Vittorio Copolleme considered that control of the Copolleme Corporation was a greater and more complex responsibility than the rules that restored the family vote. Accordingly, his will declared that the Corporation should remain under the management of the trustees until Beatrice Copolleme reached the age of forty in 3161 APC, at which point the trust would be dissolved and the sisters would assume full authority over the Copolleme Corporation, dividing their responsibilities as they saw fit between them.   Editor's note : The reader is again reminded, if such a reminder is necessary, that a year on Magicians' End is only around two thirds of the length of a year on Earth Zero. This requirement therefore, in Earth Zero equivalent years, translates to an age between twenty six and twenty seven years old. Forty was often seen as a suitably mature age for engaging with serious financial transactions, so Lord Vittorio Copolleme's stipulation was not surprising or unusual.   Amoretta Giconi had a less complex but similar path laid out for her. The Meldine River Company had always been structured to run on a less personal basis than the Copolleme Corporation and needed no special trust to continue functioning in the hands of the existing captains and merchant directors. But Feirance Giconi, having rather more faith in the intelligence and good sense of his daughter, allowed for her introduction to the business at as young an age as practical (and always assuming, as he must in his will, that the Council of Eight could back up his wishes). Thus it was, that with the help of Polla Coretti and the sympathetic and guiding aid of the Meldine River Company board of directors, Amoretta gained knowledge of the business she stood to inherit faster than her cousins did. Unlike her cousins, the Giconi Family had no claim to the rights of an inherited Adjudicator, and she was expected to play a less prominent role in the Council of Eight as a consequence. although the voice of the owner of the Meldine River Company would always carry weight in the corridors of power.   In 3156 APC, Amoretta became engaged to Xander Fenlass, a relatively minor noble whose family had traditional seats on the Council of Eight but also had no voting rights.   This was the situation in Zalgurim at the time when Clarise Vabatan came to the city. The story of what happened next is told within Volume 7 of her diaries, and to avoid spoilers, should ideally be read there first. The important details are summarised behind the button below.   Clarise Vabatan in Zalgurim