Grand Cleansings

The Grand Cleansings were reactions to the horrors of the Age of Blood , where responsibility rightly or wrongly was attributed to mages and later the elder races and those who were different. Many of the elder races decry the Grand Cleansings as a uniquely Human hysteria, however, even they fell victim to the hysteria attributing blame to innocents. People look for monsters to attribute blame for great disasters, and the Age of Blood is perhaps the longest and greatest disaster Runetalras has ever seen; the result were the Grand Cleansings. The Grand Cleansing has been divided into two stages, the Wild Cleansings and the Controlled Cleansings.

Wild Cleansings

The Wild Cleansings were the initial form that the Grand Cleansings took, it was disorganised, chaotic, and bloody. People sought to take vengeance upon those they blamed for the Age of Blood, which at first were mages; they were hunted down, tortured, and burnt at the stake. This took place throughout most of Runetalras, with the exception of the Wild Isles and Atarsid Isles.
Crowns and kingdoms initially welcomed the Wild Cleansings, mages had long possessed an ability to challenge the power of monarchy and nonhumans challenged hegemony. The Wild Cleansings were seen as a useful opportunity to eliminate potential threats, whilst they distracted from the failures of the kingdom to protect their citizens from the Age of Blood. As the Wild Cleansings raged on for years the number of mages that could be found decreased, this did not slow the cleansings. There was still bloodlust and a desire to punish those they believed were responsible. Thus the responsibility began to shift to nonhumans and those who were different, their blood began to flow through the streets. It was at this point that the kingdoms of the elder races came to their senses, as if sobering from a drunken stupor. The persecution of mages there either stopped as suddenly as it began or was forcibly put to an end by these kingdoms. In the Human kingdoms, the flow of death and persecution continued for years.

Controlled Cleansings

After two decades of the Wild Cleansings began to take a significant toll on the economies and stability of the Human kingdoms. Additionally, clerics, priests, witch hunters, and leaders of the Wild Cleansings bagan to amass political, military, and financial powerselfs. This situation had become untenable for monarchs and kingdoms, however, at the same time the Brightswords had begun to finish the construction of their first Arcane Bastilles, which finally allowed the Brightswords to undertake the duties they had been created for.
Instead of turning on the populist Wild Cleansings the Kingdom took control of them they codified discrimation, put monarchs and kingdoms at the forefront, and made them less destructive to the functions of state. The Brightswords were put at the forefront instead of the populist clerics and witch hunters, as they did not challenge their authority. This process has become known as the Controlled Cleansings.
The Controlled Cleansings benefited the kingdoms and monarchs, however, nonhumans, mages, and others continued to suffer violence, death, and abuse in their thousands; for them the Controlled Cleansings proved little better.
The Controlled Cleansings are widely seen to have come to an end by 105:Contempt, where it ebbed to systemic discimation and violence, rather than blood flowing in the streets.
Some exalt the Controlled Cleansings as they brought an end to chaotic mass death, while others decry it simply legalising discrination that still haunts the world today.

Related Historical Events

• 23
  The Controlled Cleansing
• 3
  The Wild Cleansing