Event · treaty
The Sealing Treaty
Settlement, Mandate and India inspect each other's Vaults; the Shared Question begins.
Read more in The Missing Century
The Shared Question: no new route to victory. The understanding that nuclear war cannot be won long predates the Vaults. What worries the blocs is that new technology might make a disarming first strike seem possible. Under the Sealing Treaty of the 2150s, the Settlement, the Mandate and India agree to ask their own Vaults whether any combination of weapons, defences or surprise could allow an attacker to escape devastating retaliation. They publish the answers, making their assessments available to their rivals. The cities that later become the Open Cities join when they sign the treaty. Every assessment has reaffirmed the old conclusion: a first strike cannot secure victory.
Divided custody. Gatekeepers rotate and never address a Vault directly. Shutdown keys are split between each Vault's owner and the Concord Accord, which absorbed the Sealing Treaty in 2452 and holds the split keys to the mirrors' emitters as well (see The Mirror Race). Each bloc's inspectors sit among the others' gatekeepers, but never put questions to their Vaults. Either key can stop a Vault; neither can restart one alone, and the Accord may use its key only on evidence of a release or breach. Owners accept this in return for proof that rival Vaults are sealed and for compute caps that bind everyone. A bloc that refuses an inspection loses both: the others' caps rise, and its fabs lose the inspection seals that let their chips pass between blocs.
One Vault. Descended from India's own Fab Wave system, it was sealed in the Partition, and the Parishad's founders inherited India's place in the Sealing Treaty and the Shared Question. Its Vault engineers come from the same families that built it, edited for generations since. With only one Vault, its answers cannot be cross-checked at home; it pays other blocs to check them, which the Settlement says is no real check, and its main reason for calling the casting vote reckless.