Part Two: The Ancient Era: The Struggle of Roads

[Overview of the Era] Modern historians generally use the term “Conflict of Ways” for the political conflicts over power, personhood, migration, education, and local authority that continued to escalate after the stargate network penetrated ordinary society and before full-scale war erupted at the end of antiquity. The early part of this periodization clearly overlaps with the latter half of the Stargate Age: between the fourth and eighth centuries, the gate network continued to expand rapidly, trade and education continued to flourish, yet political fractures were already widening along that same network. Thus, the “Stargate Age” primarily describes the maturation of transportation technology and social connectivity, while the “Conflict of Ways” describes the conflicts of values and power that emerged once those connections had matured.

The term “Conflict of Paths” refers to how civilizations chose to organize power, personhood, education, migration, and rule. Both sides of the debate possessed extensive extraordinary traditions; the true point of conflict was what kind of social relationship ought to exist between the powerful and ordinary lives.

Stargates carried Hengguang’s technology to distant places and also exposed many worlds, for the first time and over the long term, to another way of organizing social life. Artisans could leave their former employers, disciples of orders could travel afar to study, and weaker peoples and ordinary residents could see places where the powerful were subject to restraint; these concrete experiences transformed ancient politics more rapidly than any abstract propaganda.