#mazdak

I can't currently find it (edit: I found it!), but there is absolutely a datamined audio file of Trahearne saying the following lines:

Trahearne: The Grove should feel like home for me, but it doesn't. It never has. I started necromancy for my Wyld Hunt, to fight the corruption infecting Orr. My choice didn't win me any friends. Caithe's the only one who ever seems genuinely happy to see me.

We also have this dialogue, from the sylvari level 30 storyline:

Trahearne: Ah, Riannoc, I warned you - told you not to go alone. But you did not listen. We were all so confident. So unafraid of death…

Player: You told him not to go?

Trahearne: I did. But he would not listen. He said that Mazdak was too great an evil to leave unchallenged.

I know a lot of people ship Trahearne/Riannoc. (I don't, but hey.) We know very little about Riannoc and they and Caithe had strikingly similar Wyld Hunts (Trahearne to cleanse Orr, Riannoc to kill Mazdak the Accursed, a Risen lich, and Caithe to kill Zhaitan). I imagine that these three were best buddies. (And also Faolain, I suppose, since she and Caithe were a thing at that time.)

But what if that didn't happen?! I mean, in the datamined dialogue, Trahearne could just be leaving out Riannoc because he's dead, or maybe that's why the dialogue didn't make it in-game, but what if.

CONCEPT:

Riannoc sees Trahearne learning necromancy as betrayal, as joining the enemy. Most liches are necromancers, you know. Riannoc is theorized to have been a Noon sylvari, and they tend to rush up and attack problems head-on. Riannoc, being so young, may just as easily not have understood Trahearne's studious, learn-your-enemy approach; and when Trahearne, who has already shown an interest in 'the dark arts,' told Riannoc not to go, or not alone, or wait - Riannoc could easily have taken that as Trahearne... falling away, turning from his path, and maybe he was gentle with Trahearne and just said "that Mazdak was too great an evil to leave unchallenged," OR he may have shouted it in Trahearne's face, accusing him of being friendly with Zhaitan, accusing him of conspiring and perhaps no better than Mazdak in the first place, before leaving.

Now, of course, come to think of it. This isn't necessarily in-compatible with a Trahearne/Riannoc pairing. (I mean, given Caithe and Faolain lasted for ages). But it's a very, very painful version of a Trahearne/Riannoc pairing.

Socialism.

I'm kidding. Socialism, of course, did not begin in this period. Socialism is way the hell older than that and basically undatable, since it's actually a pretty straightforward concept: "sure, we can share." (Ditto capitalism: "No we can't.) (My best friend the ex-economist/Russian historian is weeping openly at this assessment.) No, what we're actually discussing today is:

Mazdak, 495-528.

Mazdak was a Zoroastrian priest, which was the last decision he made in his life that made any kind of political sense. See, Mazdak had these ideas, ideas for the purification of Zoroastrianism, and they begun with the dismantlement of the Zoroastrian clergy, which were, in his view, screwing things up for everyone. Ahura Mazda, who was good, had put wealth on the earth enough for everyone, but people, who were jerks, had unevenly distributed that wealth and then fought tooth and nail to keep their extra portions to themselves. Obviously the solution was to redistribute the wealth to each according to his needs, and from then on everyone could contribute to each other according to his means. (His being the key word -- Mazdak was also into the redistribution of women and potentially slaves.) Then the whole world would be a human garden of paradise! PS meat is murder!

It will shock you to learn that the landholders and clergy of Persia were not hugely in favor of this plan. In honor of his vegetarianism, they started calling him "the devil who would not eat." While all the peasant, mercantile, and artisan classes started discussing how best to erect giant Sassanid Realist statues of Mazdak in every marketplace, the nobility and the priests turned to the throne. "Thank God we live in an absolutist monarchy," they said. "We were a little worried about it when your predecessors cut down on our power but it'll come in handy riOH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING." To which the king, a gentleman named Kavadh I, presumably answered, "Reading the book of Mazdak," or possibly, "Institutionalizing all of Mazdak's reforms for my empire! We are BFFs," because they were. [Factual footnote.]

While Mazdak went and set up poorhouses, preached free love and nonviolence, and highly encouraged vegetarianism, Kavadh went and let him. The sources are, perhaps understandably, extremely biased against Mazdak, so it's difficult to tell what he actually did. Did he encourage his cultists to rob granaries and private homes so that they could get their wealth back quicker? (Maybe!) Did he believe in consent? (Could be! It's unclear!) Did Kavadh decide that he wanted to prove to Mazdak that he realllly believed in the redistribution of everything and gave Mazdak ... his wife??? (No.) (Come on.)

Anyway, in 496 the nobles and priests kicked Kavadh out of office. Kavadh sadly went off to do his own thing for a few years while his younger brother (by all accounts a mostly confused young man who was not really sure what to do with this empire he had been given) didn't put down anything. When Kavadh finally did come back, with a somewhat pointless supporting army, his brother gratefully returned the throne and everyone immediately went about pretending that none of that had ever happened. Kavadh was a popular, powerful king, Mazdak appears to have kept on keepin' on, and everything was great until Mazdak took a moment to look at the future heirs and point out that Kavadh had two kids and the first one was much more charming.

Wrong answer.

The second son, Khosrau, had Mazdak and the vast majority of his supporters killed. It was a lot of supporters, possibly in the hundreds of thousands range; he appears to have done it in the most ironic method possible. Sources differ on whether the method was planting some three thousand Mazdaki head first in the ground so that Mazdak could see a REAL human garden, HA HA HA HA HA!!! before he was tortured to death, or whether Khosrau invited them all to dinner so that the devil who would not eat could have ONE LAST MEAL HA HA HA HA HA!!!! before he was tortured to death, or ... whatever, but I think we can agree that Khosrau clearly thought it was hilarious.