Summer Palace of Fern, Constellation Executioner Chasm
Year 302 of the Grand Conquest
A cat lazily batted at a mote floating in a sunbeam. The cat's tongue flicked out, and then the cat was replaced by a person in a loose tunic and pants. Fern snapped their fingers and commanded a servant to take messages to several people, politely requesting their presence.
This must be understood about the Family: They are like all other Sovereigns. Fern may nominally be the genarch, but Fern could neither demand action nor inaction. The converse is also true, not even Nine Stars High Judge or Puppy could demand something of Fern.
Thus it was that five of the Family met in one of the balconies of Fern's palace. Fern of course, was hosting (along with numerous servants, but they do not count). Nine Stars High Judge, Minister of Dawn, First Among First Of The Thousand Tanzanite Terrors, and Puppy. The others understood this to be quite serious, as Puppy had donned their armor.
A great general of the Grand Conquest, Puppy was nearly as old as Fern, though far more experienced in battle and the ways of war-magic. For something to drive one such as Puppy to resort to physical armor was... frightening.
Nine Stars High Judge, who, despite the name was far more of a scholar, spoke: "About twelve thousand beats ago, the Flow changed. It is aspected heavily towards corruption and lust. The greater travel lattice is unreachable, and access to the Red Space is precarious at best."
Then Puppy spoke: "We are at war, then. Who we are at war with is yet to be determined. We know not of any with the power to do this. The Ten-Crore Stones of Death still function."
Minister of Dawn mentioned that they could tell by the new craters. All had a small chuckle.
After some discussion, a decision was reached. There was something headed their way after all. Thus would Puppy, First Among First Of The Thousand Tanzanite Terrors, and perhaps one or two others from the Family head out to meet such things. If they were people, discourse should be possible. If they were not...
Well.
Puppy hadn't had a chance to cut loose in over a century. He was getting a little twitchy. Even Fern, the mighty genarch of the family, was simultaneously curious and slightly terrified of what Puppy might do if she didn't feel a need for restraint.
N.B. Puppy's pronouns are Yes/And, shi just keeps adding new pronouns as ze encounters them. If this is confusing, that makes it happy, since this means that one of thon's defenses is working