eternity:ezu_plateau [Labyrinth]

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======Ezu Plateau======

In the decades following "The Lowlander War", as it came to be known on the Plateau, the People of Ezu undergoes perhaps a more dramatic change to its social order than any other surface nation.

Though its social order had remained unchanged for over a Millennium, surviving the rise and fall of great Lowlander Empires, even before the great war, cracks began to form within the foundations of the Caste System.

And, like a great wooden beam with an invisible crack through the centre, placed under slow but constant strain, at first the change was so small and subtle as to be entirely imperceptible. For years it seemed as if nothing could crack it, until it suddenly and //violently// collapsed, transforming from a slow, subtle increase in dissent against the upper Castes, into a full blown revolutionary civil war, so quickly that to many it seemed to explode out of nowhere.

Of course, it did //not// come from nowhere. It was the result of careful and deliberate planning by those who wished to see an end to the current order. Whether the pressure that produced the conditions necessary for revolution originated entirely from within the population of the Plateau, or whether (as some future historians will speculate) there was additional destabilising pressure from the Lowlanders, is never definitively proven. But regardless of the truth, the new status quo is certainly of a benefit to the other nations, as Post Revolutionary Ezu slowly but surely opened itself to trade and travellers from the outside world. Given its geographical closeness and existing trade links, Ezu's most frequent trading partner is the city of Dolom, but it also accepts merchants from the North and South, and even the occasional visitor from the Land of Endless Sky, and the Labyrinth.

In the course of a little over a century, Ezu lost its status as the only nation where a majority of its population did not speak Tharenan, though they still maintain their own language in addition to learning the Lingua Tharena of the Lowlander Courts.

Of course, the revolution did not entirely abolish the hierarchies present within Ezu, it merely shifted who was at the top of that hierarchy, and made the lines between former castes a little more blurry. It did result in the complete abolition of the Priest and Servant Castes, acknowledging once and for all that the Divine Mysteries were the false teachings of a bunch of Ether Addled Elites living in luxury and isolated from the people, and that their writings and teachings were little more than attempts to rationalise the hallucinations of the delusional priests.

Though the Caste System no longer strictly exists, none the less, the new rulers of Ezu are largely comprised of former members of the Warrior Caste, aided by both former Merchant and even the occasional former Public Servant who's particular skill set was too unique to simply discard, though these servants still experience a marked reduction in their authority and comfort, and those servants who could //not// prove themselves invaluable to the smooth governance of the nation received an even more severe drop in quality of life. Many were simply executed for refusing to submit to their new masters.

The former members of the Lower Castes, Labourers and Merchants and Menials, often still largely perform many of the same roles that they did before, but there is now much greater mobility between professions, and no one has their children taken from them to become warriors simply because of their magic potential. With the advent of greater trade relations with the outside world, there is a much greater need for merchants and diplomats.

Though it was not brought about without bloodshed, and the new system was still far from perfect, in the end, life for the majority of the Ezu people was improved, if only marginally for some, and at the cost of those who had lost their positions of luxury.

Looking back centuries after the revolution, some will write about how Ezu slowly lost much of its unique culture in exchange for becoming a more active part of the wider world, but few but the most Conservative and curmudgeonly will sincerely argue that it was not a worthy exchange for the greater liberty and quality of life they now experience. 

Of course, there are always those who romanticise the old ways, once there's no longer anyone alive who remembers them first hand. But other than a renewed interest in traditional architectural styles around 300 years post revolution, this viewpoint is not given any serious weight in academic circles.