In brief: The First Octavian Purge was the first of the great sittings by which the Imperium of Octavium cleansed its officer corps of the inactive and the grossly incompetent. Twenty-one officers who had let their posts fall silent were brought before the Council in the hall of Mount Invictus, one man at a time, in the custody of the Inquisition. Thirteen were stripped of their rank and led out; eight were shot where they stood and their bodies nailed to wooden crosses in the hallway outside the chamber. The crucifixions drew the condemnation of the Catholic Church and of the Vatican's men within the community, and the answer of the Council that the Imperium keeps its own house. The sentences were carried out in the ranks of every Octavian group the next day.
Why the purge was held
By the late summer of 1955 (2026) the Imperium had grown faster than its officer corps could bear. Men who had been raised to command in the spring were absent by the autumn: no events hosted, no minutes served, no leave filed. The activity books of the Imperium named them plainly. The Graend Council, with the assent of Aleczaender, resolved that the ranks would be purged of those who held rank without holding their posts, and that it would be done in public, before the assembled Imperium, so that no officer could say afterwards that he had not been warned.
The task fell to StahlRichterian, Graend Councilman and Graend Architectus of the Imperium, who prepared the hall, the guard and the sentences.
The sitting
The hall of Mount Invictus was sealed. The Council sat at the presidium; four banner bearers stood with the Leader's standard, and a six-man honour line of the Inquisition stood in the aisle. The accused waited beyond the double doors of the lobby, each alone, and were fetched one at a time. Each man was walked the length of the corridor in handcuffs with an Inquisition guard at his side, brought through the hall door, and named before the Council.
For every man the charges were read from the record: the date he was last seen, the minutes he had served in eight weeks, the events he had failed to hold, the leave he had never asked for. Then the sentence was pronounced.
Thirteen men were reduced to the ranks. They were turned about, walked back down the corridor in cuffs and released into the lobby, officers no longer.
Eight men were condemned to death. Each was shot where he stood, in the back of the head, by the guard beside him. The bodies were dragged by rope down the aisle to the blood corner of the hall, and from there out through the hall door into the hallway.
The crosses in the hallway
It was in the hallway before the council hall that the First Purge earned its name in the wider community. On StahlRichterian's instruction eight wooden crosses had been raised along both walls of the passage, in the bays between the ladders and the seats. The eight bodies were carried to the crosses, hoisted by rope, and nailed to them at the wrists and the feet, and there they stayed for the remainder of the sitting, so that every man who came and went from the hall passed beneath them.
Music was played throughout: The Fortress at the opening, The Burning Barn under the trials, the Dies Irae under the crosses, and Leaving the Castle as the hall emptied. The Council then dismissed the assembly with a speech against idleness.
The reaction
Within the Imperium the sitting was received as a necessary cleansing, and the officer corps that remained was leaner and more present for it.
Outside it the crosses were the trouble. The Catholic Church, through the Vatican's men and the Papacy's own group within the community, condemned the crucifixions as a sacrilege: the instrument of the Passion used as a gibbet for deserters. Catholic voices in the servers of the movement called the display barbaric, and the complaint was carried to the Council and to StahlRichterian by name.
The Council did not withdraw the sentences. Its answer was that the Imperium judges its own men by its own law, that the crosses were a warning to the living and not a mockery of the faith, and that the purge would be repeated whenever the ranks required it. The criticism was noted in the record and left there.
The sentences carried out
The theatre of the hall was followed by the ledger. On the morning after the sitting every one of the twenty listed men was reduced to the base enlisted rank in every Octavian group in which he had held an elevated rank: the main group, the Army, and his own division or cohort. Forty-nine rank changes were made in all, without a single failure, and the one condemned man whose Discord account could be found was removed from the Imperium's server. No man was banned and no man was liquidated; the Council reserved those instruments for treason.
Aftermath
The First Purge set the pattern that the Second Octavian Purge followed six days later on a larger and harsher scale: the same hall, the same one-man-at-a-time procession, the same reading of the record before sentence, and the same reduction to the ranks the morning after. It also settled the question that the Vatican had raised: the Second Purge dispensed with crosses altogether, and put the heads of the condemned on pikes instead.