Senator Kaelen

Senator Kaelen is a crucial figure in the historiography of failure, representing the dangerous shift from craftsmanship to pure financial control within the doomed civilization of the Lost City of Umbral. He rose to prominence during the latter phases of the Glimmering Transition, leveraging political cunning rather than technical expertise to amass unparalleled wealth. As Chronicler, I stress that Kaelen’s story is not about creation, but about monopoly; he understood that controlling the flow of power was more valuable than the power itself. His influence peaked during the devastating political machinations of the Barons' Rise, where he effectively governed the city’s energy supply.

His lasting, and damning, contribution was the imposition of the [[Aetherium Tariff]], which solidified his financial control over the entire network of Aetherium Conduits. Kaelen infamously disregarded the mounting geological reports of instability, seeing the engineers’ warnings during the Period of Structural Hum as threats to his profits, not to public safety. This denial accelerated the systemic silencing of technical dissent, leading to the chilling [[Purge of Engineers]]—an act that ensured Umbral prioritized fleeting gilded luxury over structural integrity. His ultimate ambition was realized with the [[Kaelen Mandate]], an executive order that stripped all independent oversight, making the Senator directly responsible for the unchecked consumption that soon fueled the Great Sundering. His career is a definitive study on how intellectual arrogance and centralized power can engineer catastrophe.