A Little Less! - Traditions | Power Metal Saga - Chapter 2

[Excerpt from Minutes of the Transitional Council, Volume IV — Public Stability Measures] As shortages increased and production reports became less favorable, the Council introduced a series of measures intended to preserve confidence in the state. Public criticism of senior leadership was restricted where such criticism was judged likely to “weaken social cohesion,” while newspapers and civic bulletins were instructed to avoid publishing “needlessly negative assessments” of harvests, industrial output, strategic reserves, or public administration. Further decrees prohibited the circulation of information considered “misleading through emphasis,” including reports that presented declining figures without approved explanatory context. Officials repeatedly stressed that these measures did not constitute censorship, but were temporary protections against panic, foreign agitation, and deliberate damage to public morale. Within months, factory supervisors learned to revise language before submitting production reports. Editors learned which shortages were considered constructive to discuss and which were not. Citizens learned that describing a failed harvest too loudly could be interpreted as hostility toward lawful government. A surviving annotation in the margin, attributed to an unnamed member of the old Council, reads: “The old Council feared bad numbers because they meant something was wrong. The new Council fears the people who report them.” A chronicle forged in epic power metal. Book of Kastelholm