Terra Nova — The Most Populous State
There were states in Mahallem that history treated with the kindness of simple narratives — conquest, prosperity, subsequent peace, an arc that could be told easily in school textbooks without requiring many uncomfortable footnotes.
Terra Nova was not one of those states.
It was the largest in population of the entire empire — a human density that had grown over generations through internal migration, of people arriving from other parts of Mahallem in search of opportunity and finding, instead or in addition, the specific complexity of a place where opportunity and danger grew entangled in the same soil, fed by the same water.
The concentration of crime in Terra Nova exceeded any other state in the empire, and not by a small margin.
Homicides that occurred with a frequency that official statistics documented but that documentation, alone, never quite managed to fully communicate — numbers that represented lives and that became, through bureaucratic repetition, abstraction that protected those who read them from the real texture of what they represented.
Drug trafficking that operated through networks that had survived decades of eradication attempts because eradication had never been genuinely prioritized by those with enough power to make it a priority.
Violence that had become, for generations of inhabitants, not exception but background texture of daily life.
Prostitution that operated on a scale that spoke of systemic economic desperation more than of individual choice.
And there was the heavier history — the history that Mahallem’s school textbooks mentioned with the uncomfortable brevity reserved for truths that no one in power had genuine interest in examining fully.
The Terra Nova Revolution.
Decades earlier, when the local population had attempted, through protest and then through something closer to armed uprising, to demand changes in the conditions that generated the crime and the violence and the prostitution in the first place — conditions that had roots in political and economic decisions made on the Island, far away, by people who never had to live with the consequences of those decisions.
The Former Emperor, Liou’s predecessor, and his political allies, had responded to the revolution with the military.
Not military maintaining order.
Military killing civilians.
Live.
Documented, in some cases, by witnesses who had survived precisely so that memory would not die with those who had died.
Orders that came from above, from the higher government, with the justification that governments always find for violence against their own citizens when that violence serves to preserve existing power structures.
And the detail that weighed heaviest over this entire history, the detail that honest historians of Mahallem discussed in low voices and that most people preferred not to mention directly:
Liou, the current Emperor, knew this history completely.
And still allowed it.
Not actively — Liou did not order new deaths, did not continue his predecessor’s policy of direct violence.
But the structure that had allowed the Terra Nova Revolution and its brutal repression continued, in modified forms, to operate.
The economic conditions that fueled crime continued without genuine reform.
Surveillance and police repression in Terra Nova continued with a degree of violence that, in other states of Mahallem, would be considered completely unacceptable, but that in Terra Nova was treated as administrative normality.
Liou allowed this to continue.
This was one of the moral complexities of his reign that this narrative had not yet examined fully, and that would continue to exist, without easy resolution, as part of the real texture of what it meant to govern an empire of Mahallem’s scale and complexity.
Terra Nova was also, geographically, one of Mahallem’s four states that bordered directly on Indilá — which added, to the state’s already complex social texture, a strategic layer that João and the Council were, at that precise moment in the narrative, treating with growing priority.
Funceca
It was to this state — the most populous, the most dangerous, the most morally complicated of the entire empire — that Funceca arrived.
One hundred and ninety-six centimeters.
Eighty-eight kilograms distributed across a frame that communicated strength without the aesthetic of decorative bodybuilding — functional strength, built over years of real use and not training for appearance.
Black skin.
The physical presence alone, before any word or action, commanded a respect that mixed something close to fear with something close to trust, the specific combination that truly great people — not merely in size, but in substance of character — could project without conscious effort.
He loved tea.
It was a small detail that deliberately contrasted with the overwhelming physical presence, and that people who had known Funceca long enough recognized as an essential part of who he was — the capacity to be, simultaneously, someone who could resolve any physical confrontation life presented him with, and someone who found genuine satisfaction in the ritualistic calm of preparing and drinking tea with attention and patience.
Friend of the Imperial Trio.
Not the formal friendship of a political ally — real friendship, built over years, that had survived enough situations to have become absolute trust.
Best friend of Naicidade.
This was the deepest of his friendships — Funceca and Naicidade had the specific quality of people who knew each other well enough that shared silences were as communicative as full conversations, who had developed over years a mutual understanding that exceeded what most friendships, even close friendships, could achieve.
The conversation had been direct, the way conversations between the two usually were — João had contacted Funceca with the calculated urgency he reserved for requests he considered genuinely important, in contrast to the chaotic energy he applied to lesser matters.
“I need you in Terra Nova,” João had said.
“The recruits we sent to reinforce the border with Indilá are out of control.
Inexperienced, poorly coordinated, and the region is full of mobsters who will exploit that inexperience if no one reins them in first.”
Funceca had listened with characteristic patience.
“And you want me to —” he had said, not as a complete question, but as the beginning of something he expected João to complete.
“Get the recruits under control,” João had confirmed.
“Handle the mobsters the way you know how to handle them.
Stabilize the situation before it turns into something that requires larger intervention.”
Funceca had been quiet for a moment, considering.
“What payment,” he had said finally, in the tone of someone who knew João well enough to know that João always had something specific in mind, not as a cold transaction but as the way their friendship worked — concrete gestures instead of empty declarations of gratitude.
João had smiled, even through the communication that was not in person.
“One-third of tea from the Volvô Forest,” he had said.
The offer carried the specific weight João knew it would.
The Volvô Forest produced one of the rarest and most sought-after tea varieties in all of the World of Naicidade — not through magic or supernatural power, simply through the exceptional quality that specific growing conditions, existing only in that particular forest, could produce.
Funceca had accepted without further hesitation.
Terra Nova — The Arrival
Funceca walked through the streets of Terra Nova’s central district with the presence that made crowds, even on the most dangerous streets of Mahallem’s most dangerous state, instinctively part.
The city had the texture its reputation promised — buildings showing the wear of insufficient maintenance, streets where the activity happening in the shadows was as visible, to those who knew how to look, as the activity happening in broad daylight.
There was beauty too — Terra Nova was not merely crime and violence, it was also the resilient daily life of millions of people building normality within extraordinarily difficult circumstances — but the beauty coexisted, without easy resolution, with everything else.
It was in a small tea house, in a quieter corner of the central district, that Funceca found someone he had not expected to find.
Naicidade was sitting at a small table by the window, with a cup before him that still released steam with the recent temperature of someone who had just been served.
The two looked at each other across the space of the tea house.
There was no dramatic surprise — their relationship had the quality of people who crossed paths, over the years, in unexpected places with enough frequency that coincidence had ceased to genuinely surprise.
“Funceca,” said Naicidade, with the calm that was always his voice.
“Naicidade,” said Funceca, approaching the table with the step of someone whose physical presence, even in contained movement, communicated substance.
“I didn’t expect to find you here.”
“Nor I you,” said Naicidade, gesturing to the empty chair before him.
“Sit.
They’ll bring you tea.”
Funceca sat, the chair protesting slightly under his frame’s adjusted weight.
“I came because of João,” said Funceca, accepting the cup that the tea house attendant brought shortly after, with the immediate recognition of quality that people who genuinely loved tea always showed at the first aroma.
“Uncontrolled recruits on the border with Indilá.
Mobsters exploiting the situation.”
Naicidade nodded, processing the information with the attention he devoted to everything.
“I came,” said Naicidade, “because I felt I needed to.”
The phrase, spoken by Naicidade, carried a specific weight that Funceca, having known him long enough, immediately recognized as significant.
Naicidade did not come to places from empty impulse.
“Indilá,” said Funceca, slowly, piecing things together.
“The border.
The smuggling reports João mentioned.”
“More than smuggling,” said Naicidade, taking a small sip of tea before continuing, with the patience he applied even to moments of genuine urgency.
“I have been feeling something approaching Terra Nova specifically.
Not just Indilá as a distant border point.
Here.
In this state.”
Funceca was quiet, with the serious expression he reserved for when Naicidade spoke in that specific way.
“What do you feel,” he said.
Naicidade was quiet for a moment, looking through the window at the street of Terra Nova, at the visible complexity of the life happening there — the crime and the survival and the violence and the resilience, all entangled in a way that most of the rest of Mahallem preferred not to examine closely.
“I feel,” said Naicidade, finally, with the low voice that always carried weight, but that at that moment had an additional density — “that Garnaice knows about Terra Nova in a way that should concern us more than we are concerned.”
Funceca looked at him.
“Explain,” he said, with the directness that was also part of who he was.
“Terra Nova has the highest concentration of organized crime in the empire,” said Naicidade.
“It has a population that has already lived through brutal military repression and that therefore has a complicated and distrustful relationship with the imperial government.
It has a direct border with Indilá, where we already know there is smuggling activity on an anomalous scale.”
“And it has,” Naicidade continued, “a social structure that, if someone wanted to exploit internal instability in Mahallem rather than merely attack from outside, would be the perfect place to start.”
Funceca processed this with the complete seriousness it deserved.
“You think Garnaice wants to use Terra Nova,” he said.
“I think,” said Naicidade, “that Terra Nova is vulnerable in ways that Sherpia never was.
Sherpia had strong military presence and a population that, despite proximity to Mangarcu, maintained relatively solid loyalty to the empire.
Terra Nova has a population with decades of legitimate resentment against that very empire.”
“If Garnaice wanted,” said Naicidade, his voice gaining the heavy quality of someone articulating a conclusion he had not liked reaching — “not merely to create military distraction, but to create genuine internal fracture, instability that came from within Mahallem itself and not merely from external attack—”
“Terra Nova is where it would do that,” Funceca completed.
The two were silent for a moment, the full weight of the implication settling between them.
“João knows about this,” said Funceca, finally.
“João knows about the border with Indilá,” said Naicidade.
“I don’t know if he has fully connected it to Terra Nova specifically.
To the social vulnerability that exists here and that exceeds any purely military calculation.”
Funceca drank more of the tea, his expression processing the magnitude of what was being discussed.
“So,” he said, “getting the recruits under control and handling mobsters may not be enough.”
“It may not be,” Naicidade confirmed.
“But it is the necessary beginning.
Stabilizing what is visible while we discover what is not yet.”
Funceca nodded, determination settling into his expression with the same physical solidity that defined his entire presence.
“Then we work together,” he said.
Naicidade smiled, slightly, with the calm that never entirely abandoned him even in the face of the gravity of what they discussed.
“We do,” he said.
The two finished their tea in relative silence, with the quality of comfortable company between close friends who did not need conversational filler to feel connected — but with the shared awareness, present beneath the calm surface, that Terra Nova, the most populous and morally most complicated state of the entire empire, was about to become far more relevant to what was unfolding across the World of Naicidade than anyone, until this moment, had fully anticipated.