Safehold

Hundreds of ships, fully equipped.
Thousands of guns and other weapons.
Tens of thousands of bullets and various amunition.
Hundreds of thousands of tons of food, fodder and other supplies.
Millions of men, women, children.
Uncounted - and uncountable - number of miles saled, pulled, dragged, marched and walked.
Hektolitres of innocent blood spilled.
One man with a vision.
One church in need of reformation.
One realm trampled under the feet of soldiers.
One Empire on the rise.
One world in a terrible war.
One story waiting to be told.
One enemy waiting to be rediscovered.
Were all the sacrifices worth it?

There were many beautiful, sweet smelling flowers on Safehold, no doubt about that. But it was extremely difficult to import alien species from Old Earth and help them live and flourish in the Safeholdian environment. Of course, the task being time sensitive, the main focus of the terraforming teams was on all of those plant and animal species which had a real practical use and could play a huge role in the survival of the humankind on its new planet.
Pei Shan-wei sighed over a list of various seeds in their storage facilities.
"The rose are still not catching well..."

Merlin, like most of the inner circle, saw what went on in the 'concentration camps' the Inquisition got into the habit of building. He witnessed several of his friends being subjected to the Question and to the full rigor or the Punishment of Schueler. Any of that alone would have been a very, very sickening experience. All of it together left such an aftertaste, he could no longer bring himself to feel anything but grim satisfaction at every Inquisitor executed by Charisians. What scared him was that he wished upon them something far worse than a simple beheading or hanging.

When he was hunting, most of the creatures were not fast, agile or smart to escape if he set on getting them. Younger krakens of his school worshipped him, calling him immortal.
He decided to do what no kraken has ever done - hunt a sea wywern. He waited until one came close to the surface and attacked.
It escaped, but parked itself short distance away. He jumped and missed again.
Provoked, he tried once more.
His fourth jump ended on a quay - out of the water.
The wywern flew away cackling.
Desperately gulping for breath, he learned he is mortal...

Zion was a real gem in the Archangels' crown. Anybody who was fortunate enough to get into the city could not argue with that statement. The Temple was amazing - a true work of the archangels themselves, with all of its 'magical' properties.
For all that, however, Zion and the Temple were a place of corruption and evil.

Tellesberg was not that majestic - it was a city of merchants and workers, a city of sailors and fishmongers. Built only and solely by the hands of men. Its Cathedral was beautiful, but not magical. Yet it was the truer House of God.

The world was changing, and nothing could stay the same.
Archbishop Michael Stainair, the head of the 'heretical and apostate' Church of Charis stood in the Tellesberg Cathedral, looking at the magnificent stained windows.
For some, he was the catalyst of all the changes.
But, for those who knew him, he was something like the eye of the storm.
Because in the world full of turmoil, he - by everything he was and did - showed everyone that even during these trials something prevails.
Three things - an echo from a different planet, a distant past - stay unchanged forever: Faith, Hope and Love.

When Nimue Alban's PICA woke up after thousand year sleep in the Mountains of Light and listened to the history of Col. Pei, it all seemed fairly simple. Not easy, perhaps, but straightforward. The firm grip of the church of God Awaiting needed to be broken. If war was a necessity, so be it.
When Merlin Athrawes threw his lot in with that of Charis, it became far more complicated to view the death of people he came to care about as just 'collateral damage'. But even pain and loss couldn't push his mission's objective aside. Mankind was at stake.

"Mounted like this, it takes too much effort to pull the gun of this size back in enough to reload. Therefore the process is slow and cumbersome," young Mahndrayn explained to his audience, sketching on the slate-covered wall of the office. "Now with the new mount we are proposing, the friction caused when the gun moves backwards after firing should be much lower. Therefore the gun will slide right back to where we need it for reloading almost automatically."
Merlin stood in corner, smiling. This was exactly the kind of creative, inventive thinking he hoped to rekindle in Safehold's population.

Vicars Trynair, Maigwair, Duchairn and Clyntahn - otherwise known as the Group of Four - sat around the table in Duchairn's chambers, discussing all the usual matters necessary to run the Church of God Awaiting. It seemed that the Church's influence in Charis have been steadily weakening, even more so since the incident of Church's manipulation of the succession dispute over one of the aristocratic titles of the realm.
"Those charisian mark-pinchers and inovators are courting Shan-wei with their inventions," Vicar Clyntahn stressed most emphatically. "I say we build a joint, unstoppable fleet and take care of them once and for all..."

After the last argument Langhorne chose to end this one and for all. One kinetic strike (or 'Rakurai', as he was fond to call it) later, Alexandria Enclave was turned into the Armageddon Reef. Pei Shan-wei and all her blasphemous ideas were destroyed. At least that was what Langhorne thought.

The craters on that barren land were the most visible and widely known reminder of what happened, but not the only one. The journal of St. Zherneau survived hidden, to reveal the truth. Nimue's PICA waited almost a millenium to start reviving in humankind the impressions of things long past.

"I have to go or the Royal Council shall dispatch a search party for me... and even Edwyrd won't be able to stop them..." Sharleyan sighed, blowing one last kiss to her husband over the comm link.
Emperor Cayled pouted back at her from thousand miles away: "Fine, go... show them who truly rules the Empire."
"I'm glad you're aware of that," she grinned at him. "I'll talk to you again at noon."
"I love you," he said and the comm link went dead.
Almost immediately after that he realized he doesn't know if she meant his noon or hers.

After Clyntahn's 'Rakurai' succeeded and she sat at the deathbed of her husband, Prince Nahrmahn, Princess Ohlyvya felt as if someone ripped her heart out. But in this case, love got the chance to conquer death.
When Merlin 'resurected' Nahrman's personality in the virtual reality, she felt blessed beyond belief. She was again able to hold conversations with him, ask his opinion, see him.
And then the impossible happened. With the VR suit she could submerge herself into Nahrmahn's new reality and actually feel him again. Death couldn't reach into the depth of the electronic world.
Nahrmahn and Ohlyvya kissed.

The winters in Siddamark - especially in the mountains - were never easy.
Even in years when harvest was plentiful, getting enough food for winter to Glacierheart and other highland provinces was a challenging task under the best of conditions.
But this winter was different. The 'Sword of Schueler' drowned the crops in blood and fire. Most of the Republic was starving. Even so, those remaining loyal to the Protector were still fighting, holding against the oncoming tide of the Army of God.
When the Charisian help came, the hope brought by it glowed warmer than the first rays of spring sun.

Sharleyan Ahrmahk rose from her window seat and crossed the room to the cradle where her daughter, Alanah Zhanyat Naimu just started crying. A tall man beat her to the crib and lifted the baby out.
“Thank you, Mer-Ahbraim. But I don’t think it will do much good,” the Empress watched the PICA of Nimue Alban cradle her tiny namesake, offering her a finger to suck on.
“See, all better, I’m good with ow-“ Ahbraim lifted the finger to his eyes, examining it.
“This would be nasty, if I weren’t a PICA. You should have told me she’s begun teething.”

This planet was to be the new, better Earth. But it needed to be wrangled under control, made habitable for human beings... in one word: terraformed. The fauna and flora were much more aggressive than anything on the old Terra was. The humans and other big predatory mammals ruled over the Earth - but here, even after all the work put into Safehold by Pei Shan-wei and her crews, one thing was clear: On this world, the rulers of the Earth will always play second fiddle. On this world the pinnacle of evolution had six legs and was very distinctly reptilian.