[Exalted] A Kingdom of Cinders

My current stint as an historian is not one I enter for my own pleasure, but out of spite. I was content to live anonymously in my humble cabin in the Viridiana Hills and sup upon the joy of living in such beautiful environs when, to my misfortune, a peddler of books came through town while I was on one of my weekly shopping visits. Whimsy struck me at the worst moment when I saw this scraggly man's cart laden with wine-stained bibliographies and hagiographies, and I decided that I could survive without my usual slice of sheep's cheese wrapped in grape leaves from Isidora's shop, for it has been quite some time since I last read any history books. I dedicate this work to Isidora, who deserved all that I paid in total for these execrable wastes of paper masquerading as the "true" history of the Kingdom of Amaya.

Let us begin with a small summary of the reign of King Melos II, for there are scant remains of that which preceded him. Melos II inherited from his father, Melos I, an Exaltation and roughly 320,000 square miles of land that he had very little interest in ruling. The day-to-day issues were left to a corps of nepotistic bureaucrats while the king pursued his hobbies elsewhere; in the beech forests of the Fire Mountains he hunted rocs and sky titans with only a lance, in the idyllic villages of the Viridiana Hills he seduced the sons and daughters of olive planters and citrus farmers, and in the silver-kissed fields of Espina he led his soldiers in conquest for the sake of conquest. Even the historians of today, sycophants to the end, will admit that Melos II's early reign was emblematic of the selfish and shortsighted behavior that had seized Dragon-blooded society in the Late Shogunate era. It was only in the twin calamities that ended the Shogunate that his worth was revealed.

The common estimate given for how many perished from both the Contagion and the Balorian Crusade is nine-tenths of all previously existing life on Creation, but what sometimes fails to come across is how much of that was due to knock-on effects resulting from the collapse of civilization. Banditry, famine, and the decay of unattended First Age artifice killed just as many as the plague and the Fair Folk did. King Melos II's talent was in gathering together those who had survived the Contagion into a coherent military force, able to zealously guard what fertile territory they could hold against vagabond warlords and, later, the raksha. His personal charisma and ability to empathize with the common folk, previously wasted on orgiastic frivolity, aligned thousands of mortal survivors under his own banner. Melos's familiarity with the Fire Mountains became a massive advantage in resisting the genocidal armies of Balor; he had dozens of redoubts dug into the mountains flanking the Humming Valley, in addition to vast tunnel networks that enabled his soldiers to conduct devastating ambushes. Every mile the crusaders took was paid for in massive casualties, but the hordes of the Balorian Crusade were near-endless; it took years, but they finally reached the end of the valley to lay siege to Nahaeleshen, the former capital of Amaya. While the king's tenacity had brought his followers this far, it was only luck that freed them; a year into the siege, the soon-to-be Scarlet Empress rediscovered the arcane weapons system known as the Sword of Creation.

Within an hour of the Sword's activation, the Fair Folk besieging Nahaeleshen were decimated by what one soul taking shelter in the city (a merchant by the name of Bolivar of Argentosa) described as, "-an emerald bolt of lightning, miles long, that pierced the hearts of every loathsome devil surrounding the city". After the siege had lifted, King Melos II, drained from decades of continuous guerrilla warfare, set to work on securing his legacy before he passed away. With the advice of his wife, Queen Elana, Melos II parceled out fiefdoms to the Dragon-blooded that had rallied behind him, establishing a new nobility. He then sought to produce an heir, for all three of his sons and his sole daughter had perished during the war against the Fair Folk. King Melos II died in his sleep only a week after the birth of his last child, a boy named Alaris.

Now, all of the above is adequately portrayed by the historians I've read. They've removed aspects such as his lustful antics to pander to Immaculate censors and claim that the corruption of his bureaucracy was unknown to him, but these works are truthful enough that one can learn something of value from what they read, whether it be how to wage war in mountainous terrain or that the right circumstances can make majesty out of mediocrity. It is the reign of King Alaris that heralds the problems with modern Amayan history. The man has been reduced to a boogeyman meant to scare little lordlings and ladies into compliance, and as a low bar to clear for their parents; even the most incompetent of the grandees here can "boast" about being better than Alaris. All history after him has too been distorted, akin to a clear pond that has had a large clod of dirt cast into its center. One cannot use such befouled narratives to assemble anything even close to a usable understanding of the world that surrounds us; it can hardly come as a surprise that the hardships this once great nation endures partially stem from these falsehoods. I shall begin with an examination of the epithet that is invariably tacked on to the end of King Alaris's name, so that we may discover the more objective reality of his reign.

What epithet, dear reader, did Alaris have? This shall determine the circumstances of our hero's birth, seven centuries later.

[ ] The Heretic.
-In an attempt to rebuild the lost splendor of his father's era, Alaris makes a heretical deal with a Lunar witch that, when discovered by the Immaculate faithful, results in his assassination and the extermination of his lineage, save for one unknown bastard fathered upon a peasant. Our hero shall be outcaste, born outside of the decadent and deadly Dragon-blooded nobility.
[ ] The Seduced.
-The king forsakes his queen for Peleps Shan, an explorer from the Scarlet Empress's Realm, and attempts to incorporate his kingdom as a client state of this superpower on favorable terms. After a short but violent civil war, he is slain by loyalists serving his wife. Our hero shall be of highest birth, descended from the last child Alaris fathered with the queen he abandoned.
[ ] The Mad.
-The king wages war on a cult from the ghost-haunted deserts, and from the mouth of its leader, he shall hear something that will fester in his mind. What follows is a period of increasingly erratic behavior. He shall be deposed by his son following a rebellion by opportunists, but his house will be greatly diminished. Our hero shall be born into that house, which has been eclipsed in power, reputation, and wealth by its peers.

Hope this gets to you somewhat intact; the woman I hired to transport this to you is trustworthy, but she plays it loose with how she smuggles things to the Isle. If there's any coffee beans or chickpeas stuck between the pages, that's on her. The Immaculate censors here run a surprisingly tight operation; took one look at the stiffs running the place and knew they couldn't be bribed to look away. Spent every last coin I had to assemble a passable disguise as one of the royal architects wanting to enter their temple for a "routine centennial inspection". I'll keep looking for the writer, but this should have some of the background information you wanted in regards to our person of interest in Amaya. Also, please send cash, or I'll be eating rats again, and you know how much I hated it the last time that happened.

-E

You are the last hope of the Synetos lineage, and you are being made to do grunt work. You are being made to do grunt work because your grandfather, previously the only Exalt in the family until you Exalted yourself three years back, considers you to have been coddled by your parents following the death of your older brother. You are being made to do grunt work because of the unusual nature of this situation; the same type of murder has played out in three different settlements on your family's county, and your peasants are now very agitated. You are being made to do grunt work because, ultimately, your family doesn't actually have the manpower to resolve this issue; in a more wealthy fiefdom, the nobles there would be able to raise militias for communal protection, but your mother ran the numbers and determined that if they did so during harvest season, taking away those farmers from their scythes might cause a missed payment to the Guild (whom your family is severely indebted to), and that cannot happen.

Your family is in this predicament because of King Alaris the Mad, your ancestor. No one really ever remembers him as the cunning young man that personally designed the aqueduct system that supplies water to a third of the kingdom and the roads that bind modern Amaya together, not even your family. They think of what he became after he personally led the final assault on the fortress of the Singers of the Black Hymn, a heretical group dedicated to the illicit worship of the dead. Their thoughts immediately go to infamous events such as the banning of anything made of gold, his unprovoked slaying of a Realm diplomat, and his planned crusade upon the Underworld itself. That last one was what gave Ashiri, that ever-ambitious cousin of his, a usable excuse to usurp Alaris. Nowadays, your family serves the Royal House of Ashiri, managing a little barony granted as a small courtesy to Synetos, who ended the rebellion by defeating and imprisoning his own father.

You are now approaching the village of Mariposa, where the most recent of these murders took place. It is at the farthest southern edge of your family's fiefdom; to the east, the Iron-Grave Desert, to the south, a poorly maintained stone road leading to the Diamond Road. Here, there is enough well water and rain to support fifty-four villagers (previously fifty-five), eking out an existence growing maize, harvesting peyote, and making pottery to be traded with the few traders that take a detour to visit your barony's capital. It has taken you three days to get here to this squat little mudbrick town on horseback, and the sun has now set; the settlement is only visible at a distance through the tiniest flickers of candle light and the careful movement of torchbearers.

You eventually arrive at the north end of town. You are stopped by a middle-aged man, his only piece of armor an iron kettle hat, his only weapons a stick covered in pitch and what is obviously a scythe recently beaten into the shape of a glaive. He narrows his eyes and holds his torch up to get a better look at you, but as he does so, the wind kicks up; the torch flickers and sputters, scattering its light everywhere but upon yourself. "Announce yourself!", he asks; his voice cracks as he does so, and you notice that the tip of his spear is shaking ever so slightly. You suppose you'd better comply; if you make him any more tense, his heart might give out.

Who are we, anyway?

[ ] You are Lady Julia.
-You never really cared about your family name. That isn't to say you don't love your family, far from it; you watched, tears streaming down your face, as your parents begged the Guild debt collectors for more time after your brother's funeral, furious at how they humiliated your parents. You now know that titles are empty words, meaningless in the face of actual power. People, however, are very valuable; both the nobles and the Guild would be nothing without them. You are a Wood Aspect, and the peasants you will come to rule are a fertile garden, waiting to be grown into your future base of power.
[ ] You are Lord Ramiro.
-You had hoped to be a scholar your whole life. The things you could learn in the universities of Nahael or Adamanta! Alaris may have been mad, but he was a genius prior to that, and those who can innovate are key in this fallen age. You may never get a chance to go to university now that you are your parent's sole heir, but as a Fire Aspect, your natural curiosity and desire to learn burns hotter than ever.
[ ] You are Lady Camilla.
-You would have been a monk if your brother hadn't died; you had already shaved your head and packed your bags to make a pilgrimage to Nahael when the news broke. You already had natural talent in communing with the spirits; as a child, you had managed to make contact with an ancestor of your house. As an Air Aspect, the wind guides you and you know that so much supernatural power is out there in the greater world, waiting to be tapped into by you.