The Year of Gilded Stone
The Year of Gilded Stone (1935–1932 YE) represents the most ostentatious and ethically vacant span within the larger confines of the Barons' Rise, itself merely a tumultuous interval in the expansive Age of Weaving. Historian Connor views this as the pivotal moment when the leadership of the Lost City of Umbral achieved a perfect, blinding indifference to the looming geological threat. It was a time of deliberate, glittering distraction, where the ruling mercantile elite—those newly enriched Barons—diverted all attention from the structural stresses accumulating in the depths by showcasing dizzying, unsustainable wealth.
This era, tragically brief but devastating in its influence, was defined by the maximal extraction and use of refined Aetherium, the profits of which flowed almost entirely into the coffers of figures like Senator Kaelen. The Barons commissioned monumental, non-essential civic projects, spending unimaginable sums to construct soaring, energy-intensive architectural wonders like The Opal Halls, which reflected the new light but cast profound shadows over the moral core of the city. Their wealth was codified through the brutal, monopolistic enforcement of the Aetherium Tariff, ensuring that the cost of Umbral's opulence was borne entirely by the common dweller and the increasingly marginalized Deep-Delvers. The true controversy of this time was not the technical recklessness of figures like Architect Vorlag, but the societal willingness to embrace such excess, cementing a fatal hubris that would accelerate the city toward the inevitable Great Sundering. The sheer volume of non-essential luxury items created during this period, often plated with precious metals and infused with channeled Auric Resonance, led to the implementation of the widely hated, and highly symbolic, levy known as The Gilded Tax, a final insult to the deep-dwelling traditionalists. Seek not the truth within the lines of the glittering facades, but in the echoes between them, and the screams of those who paid the price.
This crucial period of moral decay is further subdivided by the Chroniclers of the Abbey into smaller, yet significant, movements for analysis:
1. The The Great Display: The height of competitive aristocratic opulence (1935 YE).
2. The Zenith of Surface Projects: Maximal investment in outward-facing architecture (1934 YE).
3. The Quiet Flight: The beginning of the deep-delving traditionalists' final, permanent retreat from Umbral's upper reaches (1933 YE).
4. The Year of Gilded Stone: The time of maximum Aetherium consumption for aesthetic purposes (1932 YE).