Sin, Harvester of Sorrows

The ultimate evil, the Foeman, the undying Fiend, the Anti-Grace: these are but a handful of epithets used to describe Sin the Tyrant among Northerners. But he is everywhere, across the globe, Magnella’s mysterious boogieman. It is a redundant fact of life to say Magnesans blame Sin for the destruction of their civilization and oppression of their ancestors.

Northerners call this period of Sin’s dominion over humanity the reign of terror. Like the French Revolution’s reign of terror, this was supposedly an era of unfettered violence and comprehensive oppression. Yet Northerners do not often speak of this era. In a sense, it’s avoided. When it is discussed, the general themes involve mass poverty, endemic disease, torture/labor camps, persistent surveillance and the hoarding of individuals into precarious high-rising buildings. The overall image is something akin to a dystopic police state with SCOs representing the police.

But the little details are very rarely considered. How did people make ends meet day to day? Who were sent to these torture/labor camps? Why were people watched? There are no answers. The reign of terror is a broad, murky era of “history” where followed the War out of necessity for change and justice. Its span is equally broad: from a hundred years to several thousand. There is no consensus.

There is no understanding of the world before Sin, either. Actual recorded history. In a painfully real sense, objective history to a Northerner began with the War—despite the fact that this history is not recorded either. So the climate in which the Tyrant ascended is unknown. One has to turn to legend then. According to the Northern folk hero “Rage” Page Turner, Sin’s supremacy was ushered in via another war seemingly started by him. Bit by bit he overcame every nation and every country’s defenses until the whole of the planet was his. Thus commenced his reign of terror.

But who (or what) created Sin the Tyrant? Magnesans, apparently. For they blame themselves: “human arrogance,” they say, beget Sin, which to any Magnesan implies their ancestors’ willful betrayal of Magnella. Their ancestors, having grown irreversibly arrogant and self-assured, turned their backs on their god. They disavowed her significance in their lives: that meaning required no god or higher power. They had decided they needed only themselves and the power they had created for themselves, whence came their “original sin” that made Sin♦.

Two hundred and sixty-nine years have gone by at the launch of Fall of Sin and still the Revolutionists are no closer to discovering his whereabouts (or his “lair” as some word). In truth, not many suspect he lives in the North, let alone Magnesa. The “flat-earthers” argue at the edge of the world, somewhere east beyond The Atlas. But not many Northerners contemplate a theory, oddly enough, given one of the Original Tenets Waste the Tyrant till you or he are remains arguably commands it. In effect, Northerners have become inured to not caring about his location.

A strange thing given he is their enemy. As is this: With being the ultimate evil, one would think that Sin would feature in a near-infinite number of tales that shed awareness on his devilry—but one would be incorrect. There are surprisingly few. In the North, these are largely relegated to either “Rage” Page Turner in his quest to unite the land against the Tyrant or Turner’s heroic equal, Kadmus. Yet the Tyrant plays a more or less bit role. His physical aspect lacks a hard description in these stories: he is old; he is evil.

True to his persona, Sin is the greatest of enigmas shrouded in the densest of nebulae. Almost every Northerner is aware of this, but too few realize it is an affliction.

♦Magnella, because she embodies grace and purity, is in no way thought to have had a hand in Sin the Tyrant’s existence.