The Zirconium
and Niobium Eras (40 and 41) formed the golden age of the Teleological
Guilds, institutions the like of which cannot be
found in Earth
history.
Their origin lies back in the Cobalt Era, but not much
is known of them before era 40. They seem to have begun more as
mysterious secret societies than as public bodies. Perhaps the
mystery and the secrecy were not deliberate so much as forced upon them
by their special concerns, which were way over most people's
heads.
The Guilds were partly research institutions, partly
exploration societies, partly - for a time - political clubs or even
nations. Their justification, their stated purpose, was to
discover the trends of history, the direction in which Uranian Man was
heading. They were trying to steer the species through the rocks
and rapids that might lie in wait in the eras ahead. But the
method by which the Guilds undertook their research made it hard to
enforce scientific rigour on the published results.
The Zirconium
Era lasted 3,155,594 Uranian days, or 128.6 Uranian years - equivalent
to 10,799 Earth years. The Guilds built fine conical buildings for their headquarters,
almost rivalling the cities for splendour. (Coincidentally or not, the famous
mobile city Yr, City of Mists, was built and
launched in this era.) One of the guilds allowed power to go to
its collective head and unleashed a war for the sake of promulgating its
own point of view of history. Its defeat led to the
eomasp which ushered in the calmer Niobium
Era.
This, era 41, lasted 6,662,243 Uranian days, or 271.4
Uranian years - equivalent to 22,800 Earth years. During this time
the guilds were generally calmer and more responsible than they had been
during the Zirconium. It was a great age for elegance in
architecture, city planning and the design of airships.
Accumulated wealth from a long period of peace led to some exploration
using the rare, expensive techniques of matter-transmission, made
possible by equipment left over from the Phosphorus Era and rarely used
since then.
The Teleological Guilds, for all their wealth and social
importance, contributed remarkably little to the sum of human
knowledge. Their chosen field of investigation was almost
impossible to master, and gradually they lost their original purpose and
became societies to promote exploration and more mundane
knowledge. Finally, during the last few hundred thousand days
of era 41, they dwindled into being mere departments of
city government.
>> The Ghepions
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