All the power: A bit of background [Str8] [fantasy] [no sex]

*Author’s note: There are some elements to the background of this story which would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to shoehorn into the story itself. To solve that problem, I have written this. It a short piece which is intended as an overview for some of the background. It does not go into great detail; it’s a brief overview. Links to the actual stories will be included in a comment.*

*The piece contains no sex, and it is set outside of the realm of our story. The setting is a college lecture hall, thousands of years after the events depicted in the story….*

***

The professor clicked a button on his laptop, advancing a slide. The new slide read: “History of the Trasian Empire: The Rise of Emperor Athello IV, aka His Supremacy.”

“OK, so.” The professor paused and pushed his glasses up from the bridge of his nose. “Even though Tras had a history going back over a millennium, when most people hear “Tras” they think of Athello IV. His Supremacy. His reign was a brief, strange period in the history of the world – and in the history of Tras itself.”

“Athello conquered the entire world, or at least the known world, in an astonishingly short time – maybe a decade or so. He decimated old Trasian institutions and replaced many of them with institutions loyal to him. He consolidated a lot of power that had previously been distributed in different places – institutions, nations, even to some extent religions – into his own hands. He was worshipped as God during his lifetime, and if the historical record is accurate, many people actually believed this.”

The professor pushed forward to the next side. “So, how did he do it?” He paused again. Most of the class looked bored, or was staring at little screens.

The pressor cleared his throat. “We’ve went over what happened over the past century or so the last time. Tras had, politically speaking, become a sleeping giant. Power had devolved from the imperial crown to the nobility.”

“At the same time, it was a period of peace and scientific advancement,” the professor continued. “But here’s where it gets interesting. We don’t know a whole lot about what made Trasian technology tick – much of that’s been lost. But we do know that in the century or so before Athello’s birth, there was an agricultural revolution. A massive increase in the empire’s population. There were also some big advances in military technology, artillery, explosives, that sort of thing.” The professor paused. “And there were the magneto roads. We’ll get to those in a minute.”

“So this massive increase in population – it was anything like the world had seen to that point. It was unlike anything the world would see until the birth of modern agriculture. We still don’t know exactly what the Trasians did to make it happen – the population did grow fast in other places, but it was centered on Tras – but it was unprecedented.”

The students still looked pretty bored. The professor rubbed his eyes. “But unlike when modern agriculture got going, there were no new factories to absorb all these people. Manufacturing went up, sure, but not like that. So you had tens of millions of people – literally – hanging around with very, very little to do. It was a combustible situation.”
“So Athello’s father, Maeson II, came up with a plan. We covered this the last time. Wrest power of the purse from the nobility with the support of the commoner merchant class, who hated the nobles. Use it to fund a massive military build-up. Use that to re-establish the empire’s geopoltical position, and hopefully grow it. Use it to re-establish the crown’s authority.”

The professor fixed his glasses again. “Well, Maeson II died when his son was an infant and when Athello took the throne, he carried out the plan. And it worked. It worked far beyond anybody’s wildest dreams.”

He pressed the button to push the slide forward. “Let’s take a moment to talk about the magneto roads. Just a moment because, again, we don’t know very much about them. But they basically used these incredibly powerful magnets – called supermagnets, it was a very creative name – to create something kind of like a train, although smaller. The movement was created by the magnets on the road. The technology was known about before Athello took the throne, but nobody had any idea how to actually make it work on a large scale. But after the big military build-up, Athello had a new advantage: a massive, and very well-organized, labor force.”

A hand shot up. Finally, someone was listening! “Yes,” the professor said.

“Why don’t we have magneto-roads today? I mean, if they were so great and all.”

“Good question. Well, two things. The first was that eventually those massive, well-organized labor forces, which were really need to build and maintain them, broke down. The second was the supermagnets themselves. The supermagnets were incredibly powerful. But at the time, nobody noticed that they had incredibly short half lives. There were also only a couple of known sources of supermagnets, in the Sudetian mountains. Usually the magnets started to degrade after about 20 years of use. After about 40 or 50 years, they were essentially useless. Many of the earlier roads did have their magnets replaced, but after about a century or so they were all basically just slabs. And the sources had been depleted – it required a lot of supermagnets to build a fast magneto-road. In modern times, new sources of supermagnets have been discovered, but they weren’t known back then and they’re very hard to access. And we know about the downsides of building roads with them, so nobody’s tried that on a large scale. We’re still not totally sure how the Trasians managed to control the vehicle within the road, get it to slow down and stop where they wanted it to. Some researchers have tried. It’s weird stuff.”

The student nodded politely – she looked like she had started zoning out about halfway through the answer.

The professor cleared his throat and went on. “OK, any more questions?” No hands. “OK. So…where were we? Oh yes…the labor force. The army. Athello’s new army was massive and technologicaly advanced and swept through the world. And the labor forces built things. Not just magneto-roads. They built palaces, monuments. They built infrastructure, too. Better regular roads, sanitation, acqueducts. In fact, one of the ways Athello built popular support was to have his forces build new sanitation systems anywhere they went. Common people loved that. The Trasians had excellent sanitation systems, probalby the best in the ancient world. They improved peoples’ dwellings, too, even as they ramsacked palaces.”

The professor advanced another slide. “So imagine this. You’re a commoner, you’re a peasant. Maybe you’re somewhere in the Trasian empire, maybe not. Things have been more or less the same for you as long as you or anyone around you can remember. Suddenly, this new ruler shows up. He sweeps away the old guard in a flash, suddenly what’s left of it is afraid of him and groveling to him. He impoves your roads, the streets in your village don’t smell like shit anymore. Maybe he even improves your house. He makes sure you know that all of these improvements are a result of his benevolence. To drive the point home, he builds monumental statues, temples to himself. All this happens within the span of a few years, maybe five or so, at most. What are you gonna think?”

“It’s a pre-modern society. You’re an uneducated peasant. What are you gonna think?”

No hands went up. The professor thought about calling on someone, but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.

“God. You’re gonna think it’s God.” He paused. “And of course Athello encouraged that. It dovetailed perfectly with his…condition.” The professor paused again. “Does everyone know what I’m talking about?”

Slowly, around half the hands in the room went up.

The professor cleared his throat. “They don’t always teach this before college. Hyperfertility. Do we know what that is?”

A student called out: “Athello had it!”

“Well, yes,” the professor replied. “I’m not a biologist. So we’ll just touch in this briefly. But hyperfertility is a very, very rare genetic disorder. Basically, it’s the overprodution of…sperm.” Some of the students snickered, but the word got their attention. “I don’t have the figures in front of me, but the medical definition of hyperfertility is something like a man who produces an exponent of the average man’s sperm production. So the lowest point would be that figure – the average – squared.”

Most of the students were paying attention now. Not shocking. A hand went up. “So some people have this today?,” a student asked.

“Yes,” said the professor. “But it’s very, very rare. Something like one in every several hundred thousand men have it. And for most of the, it’s close to the lower bound and basically indistinguishable from high libido.” The students were, mostly, paying attention. I should teach a sexuality course, the professor thought.

“So, Athello had hyperfertility. But not only was he hyperfertile, he had probably the most extreme case of hyperfertility ever, in history, at least if the records that survive are even somewhat accurate. It’s certainly the most extreme case ever recorded, and by a longshot.” The professor paused. “And hyperfertility is also associated with dominance, high testosterone – other sterotypically masculine traits. And genetic disorders can be reinforced by one’s environment. Athello conquered the world, he set out to grow his power and succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, blew through them. He wanted to dominate people, he did; he wanted them to worship him, they did. He basically declared himself God, and no one seriously objected. So his hyperfertility was already off the charts, and then it went way off the charts, and then way, way off the charts. It was sort of this self-reinforcing cycle. By the time of the sacred declaration, he scarcely seemed human.”

The professor scanned the room and chuckled. A number of students were smirking. “I see that some of you know what I’m taking about. The ironic thing is, if Athello were alive today, he’d almost certainly be some sort of deviant. He’d be in an asylum…something. If he had been born in almost any other circumstance, his life probably would have been miserable. But it appears that it was quite the opposite.”

The professor paused. “This is a history class, so I’ll leave it at that.” He advanced a slide.

“Anyway, during Athello’s, during His Supremacy’s, reign….” The professor stopped and looked at his watch. “OK,” he said. “I’d guess we’re out of time.” The students started to stream out of the lecture hall. “Remember to hand in your essays next week!,” the professor shouted.

Source: reddit.com/r/sexystories/comments/5fkpqq/all_the_power_a_bit_of_background_str8_fantasy_no