- Location
- Spain
This is an excellent reason to import the books in itself.
Behind the Serpent Throne (CK2)
- Thread starter The Laurent
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
This is an excellent reason to import the books in itself.
- Location
- Austria
Then, well....
[X] Tapestries, silk carpets, and the like.
[X] Horses.
Horses reasoning as before, other one...generic luxury goods seem like overall low-risk option: low space, will be bought by someone anyway, foreignness is less of a big deal than in poetry, I think (that's if those goods are foreign, of which there is no indication). Will not require follow-up or damage control unlike poetry if things go awry.
[X] Tapestries, silk carpets, and the like.
[X] Horses.
Horses reasoning as before, other one...generic luxury goods seem like overall low-risk option: low space, will be bought by someone anyway, foreignness is less of a big deal than in poetry, I think (that's if those goods are foreign, of which there is no indication). Will not require follow-up or damage control unlike poetry if things go awry.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Vote closed, can I have a final tally, ASAP?
Random Member
Gardener of Human Happiness
- Location
- Behind You
Vote Tally : Original - Fantasy - Behind the Serpent Throne (CK2) | Page 84 | Sufficient Velocity
##### NetTally 1.7.3.2
[X] Horses.
No. of Votes: 14
[X] Strange foreign grain, such as 'Wheat' could be traded in, by their connections to the Southlands.
No. of Votes: 6
[X] Tapestries, silk carpets, and the like.
No. of Votes: 6
[X] Literature/literary stylings from Hari-Su and the Southlands.
No. of Votes: 5
[X] Exotic men, women, girls and boys.
No. of Votes: 1
Total No. of Voters: 16
##### NetTally 1.7.3.2
[X] Horses.
No. of Votes: 14
[X] Strange foreign grain, such as 'Wheat' could be traded in, by their connections to the Southlands.
No. of Votes: 6
[X] Tapestries, silk carpets, and the like.
No. of Votes: 6
[X] Literature/literary stylings from Hari-Su and the Southlands.
No. of Votes: 5
[X] Exotic men, women, girls and boys.
No. of Votes: 1
Total No. of Voters: 16
Here's the tally by plan, in case you want to know what that's like.
Vote Tally : Original - Fantasy - Behind the Serpent Throne (CK2) | Page 84 | Sufficient Velocity
##### NetTally 1.7.3.2
[X] Tapestries, silk carpets, and the like.
[X] Horses.
No. of Votes: 5
[X] Strange foreign grain, such as 'Wheat' could be traded in, by their connections to the Southlands.
[X] Horses.
No. of Votes: 3
[X] Horses.
[X] Literature/literary stylings from Hari-Su and the Southlands.
No. of Votes: 3
[X] Strange foreign grain, such as 'Wheat' could be traded in, by their connections to the Southlands.
[X] Literature/literary stylings from Hari-Su and the Southlands.
No. of Votes: 2
[X] Exotic men, women, girls and boys.
[X] Horses.
No. of Votes: 1
[X] Horses.
[X] Tapestries, silk carpets, and the like.
No. of Votes: 1
[X] Horses.
[X] Strange foreign grain, such as 'Wheat' could be traded in, by their connections to the Southlands.
No. of Votes: 1
Total No. of Voters: 16
##### NetTally 1.7.3.2
[X] Tapestries, silk carpets, and the like.
[X] Horses.
No. of Votes: 5
[X] Strange foreign grain, such as 'Wheat' could be traded in, by their connections to the Southlands.
[X] Horses.
No. of Votes: 3
[X] Horses.
[X] Literature/literary stylings from Hari-Su and the Southlands.
No. of Votes: 3
[X] Strange foreign grain, such as 'Wheat' could be traded in, by their connections to the Southlands.
[X] Literature/literary stylings from Hari-Su and the Southlands.
No. of Votes: 2
[X] Exotic men, women, girls and boys.
[X] Horses.
No. of Votes: 1
[X] Horses.
[X] Tapestries, silk carpets, and the like.
No. of Votes: 1
[X] Horses.
[X] Strange foreign grain, such as 'Wheat' could be traded in, by their connections to the Southlands.
No. of Votes: 1
Total No. of Voters: 16
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Shit.
Uh. Tiebreaker vote, please?
Uh. Tiebreaker vote, please?
Zeitgeist Blue
Currently Made of Metal
- Location
- Manila, Philippines, GMT +8
[X] Tapestries, silk carpets, and the like.
- Location
- ?
I'll switch from grain to carpets
It's what you picked before. Voting twice isn't exactly a tiebreaker
Last edited:
Zeitgeist Blue
Currently Made of Metal
- Location
- Manila, Philippines, GMT +8
I did?It's what you picked before. Voting twice isn't exactly a tiebreaker
*checks*
Damn it. Thwarted!
Random Member
Gardener of Human Happiness
- Location
- Behind You
And you would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that meddling kid!
Turn 7--Results, D
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Turn 7--Results, D
Kiralo examined the assembled nobles with a thoughtful expression. Because of course most of them were nobility. Even their equipment was a little slapdash, a little personal. Rassit units didn't forbid personal touches, but this was more as if different people had different tastes and no way to decide what was best. Their armor fit a general theme, but their bows were subtly different, more different than their size and strength should allow, and the horses…
Kiralo stepped forward towards them. Each man stood by his horse. In his hand, Kiralo had a knife and an apple, and he stalked forward in his armor towards one man's horse, cutting quickly as he did. "So. You are the light cavalry of Csirit. The arm and the eye." He offered a piece of apple to the horse, a sweet looking roan gelding who accepted it almost too gingerly. "I'd like to see you give a demonstration of that. I have set out a course for each of you to run, with multiple targets. You're to navigate it as quickly as you feel able to while still engaging with the targets."
The nobility shifted, and each man looked as if he wanted to speak. Kiralo glanced back at where he had brought a servant with a large jar filled with their names. "One by one, at random. Show me where you are, and then we'll be discussing training."
One man, short and a little stout, stepped forward. "Why do we have to do this? We have done our duty well enough, and we'll do so in times of war as well. If you want to show off your fancy Rassit skills, that's fine. You're better than us. Cs-Kiralo, that isn't some surprise, and it isn't something that--"
"Cs-Ishi," Kiralo said, drawing up the name from the many he'd memorized, "Have more faith in yourself. Anyone can grow more skilled at the art of the bow and the horse." He glanced around at the assembled crowd. "If you're afraid, we can talk about that. Right now, I merely wish to evaluate you. And then I'll be assigning exercises."
******
They were not as bad as Kiralo had feared, which was not really saying much. It was a fine spring day, hot and heavy, and he watched and had his attendants take notes. Every man had flaws, and every one of them could improve. Some were decent shots, but incredibly slow to complete the simple course. Others had speed, but watching them sit on the saddle he knew that they wouldn't stay on if pressed too hard. They'd be the ones who fell out of the saddle at the first surprise, and then were cut down by the cold-eyed infantrymen who lived to see a horsed man taken down.
Everyone knew, after all, that it was the horsemen who were princes of the battlefield. After a battle, if something was not done, Rassit and Tarnarin were looted eagerly by those for whom a battle was an opportunity.
Still others had no stamina at all. They completed the course, and looked as if they had run a hundred miles already. Not even their horses, though those were in worse shape than Kiralo had expected, but themselves. Complaining of aching arms and slouching in their seats, clearly less capable of hard work than their own steeds.
Kiralo began to walk among them, giving each a task. That was a key. He could just force them to go through archery drills, or all run and ride together, but right now, he wanted each of them to work on one thing. He wanted the terrible shots to focus on at least hitting the target, the ones with no stamina to do exercises, and he tried to keep it personal.
He knew that they resented him, but he also knew, as he strode among them, that they had expected him to call them out all as one, to yell at them or worse, to do the course himself so that they could watch and know that he was better than them. So much better than them that all of their years of learning--and the fact of the matter was many nobles could barely sit on a horse, let alone ride it, and so this was learning, this was attainment of some sort--couldn't even place them in the same league as him.
And it was true, but he didn't need to remind them of that. The sun was high, and the first step was to build up their pride. It would be tricky, and it would take time.
******
As a matter of fact, it took time and effort enough that he decided, within a week, that people with similar problems should be told of it and handled together. And that had made things easier, because the hundreds and hundreds were now divided into a dozen or so groups to deal with. And even then, when combined with the Mages, he found that he had very little free time.
Of course, free time was an illusion. Everything was working towards a purpose.
*****
"The world is changing, we all know it," Kiralo said to the assembled merchants, who knelt respectfully. He had called them here because he had managed to get some of their businesses larger permissions to continue not merely for one trade mission, but for a stream of them. "War will come. I could say that it won't, and I could assure you that even if it does, it will not impact you. But it will. But wars end. The world changes. Nobody is going to blame you specifically for a nebulous and unknown relationship with me. If, in six months, I am dead…"
Kiralo shrugged, looking over at them, a slight smile on his face, "People die. But if I am alive in a year, and I will be...have you heard the Southlander saying: 'The man on horseback can make even cities kneel?'"
There were times for humility. He was less than the Gods, he was a servant of the state, he was pious and knew that he had limits, but these were cold men, and he needed to warm them up, needed to make them see what he could offer.
"I am the man on horseback. If I win, I will be the hero who saved an Empire. If I lose, you can forget me...but if I win, who ever will forget me again? I will sit astride the court as a horse, and I will break it to bridle like the wildest stallion. And people will want horses. I need horses, the light cavalry need horses, everyone needs horses because I will demand them, because I will be in a position to act as I haven't yet."
"Stallions. Mares. Geldings. Good horses, and I will be willing to pay good prices, and think of the nobles who seek my friendship? Do you think they will not realize that I love riding more than many things in this world? Just as they might play to my poetry, just as they might attempt to emphasize their piety to me, so too will they buy horses and ride them."
The nobility had a very startling tendency to bend at the knees, despite their vaunted pride.
"And I have already given one of your tapestries to a cultured figure, who has expressed great satisfaction. I myself found them very beautiful, and would love to buy more of them."
Kiralo said, "Whether or not you wish to expand this business, my servants will lay out the banquet, and there is tea and rice wine for those who wish it, but I have gotten the permits for the import of the tapestries, and I have gotten the Messenger's office to agree ahead of time to consider purchasing any horses you send north."
Kiralo smiled and sat down, kneeling, at the table with them. "So perhaps we could have a toast to coming prosperity?"
******
"A toast! To the two greatest playwrights in all of Csirit," one drunken man bellowed. A woman, rather barely clad, hesitated to refill the glass, but the poet turned and glared at him, and in a man almost six feet tall, that was enough to convince her that it wasn't worth it trying to save him from the consequences of indulgence.
Kiralo raised his glass, glancing over at Bei'ren as he did. Yet another party, and it seemed that poets were like anyone else. Many of them liked a good drink. It made Kiralo think about Kueli, still traveling north. Even as he went north, parts of the army were going south, to put down the bandits and begin the process of pacifying Irit. The goal was simple, and Kiralo had thought the idea through.
They'd serve, besides as bandit-slayers, as an advanced force if Prince Jinhai began his march by trying to cut through Irit. A threat that would require him to be careful of being pincered or otherwise put between two armies with no way to fight them one at a time.
It was...a good plan. Kiralo was also too drunk to consider it right now.
"Give us a poem!" one of them yelled, and Kiralo waved his hand. These were not the leading poets, but Bei'ren had apparently decided that if the leading poets were going to shun him, the men who were behind the Emperor's poetry teacher and other abominations against poetry, that he'd instead win friendship with other groups.
"The drunkard's cup has a hole in it/
For what he swallows he can't stomach/
So fill it with rot, as like as not/
And, by the gods, he'll see no difference," Kiralo mumbled out, managing just barely to keep to the nine-syllable scheme.
The others laughed and tried to follow, with varying success. Kiralo smiled.
*******
The next morning, he was nursing a rather horrible headache as he read through the reports on Ha'dong. He had more people to visit, because Bei'ren had determined that the only way to win the poets of the palace was by storm, and when Kiralo had asked him with help making introductions, Bei'ren had been on it quickly enough that it was likely he'd been waiting for this.
Kiralo knew that the matter of the poets was less important than the war, but he needed to build a base in court. His posturing had not just been posturing, though there was more of that then he would have wanted to admit. But he wanted to be the power behind the throne, at least until the Emperor was grown.
So, he read about Ha'Dong. The son of an influential Basratan noble, now dead with his estate passed on to his estranged brother, he had joined the army as an officer, and did have a reputation as something of a warrior. At least, he had taken part in two notable campaigns to clear out bandits before he had traded on his connections and the downfall of the last Councilmen to enter the council and rise quickly to the top, where he had advocated the loyalty of Prince Jinhai in turning back the enemies to the east.
When the Emperor had died, he had been the man leading the charge to arrest and execute Prince Jinhai on mere suspicion of treason, and he'd almost dragged the entire country into war with his fervor. His foolish fervor. If he'd gotten what he wanted, the Empire might well be sundered and destroyed by now. Certainly, if they failed to kill Prince Jinhai quickly, or capture him, it would have only helped the Prince's cause. Since then, however, once Kuojah beat back the calls for war, he had been a constant ally in the pushes to expand and strengthen the military to prepare for war. He'd made himself indispensable, and if war came he'd be one of the few Generals on the council who might actually be able to participate more directly, since he truly was not that much older than Kiralo.
So, he was a man to watch...and possibly to reward, despite his known distaste for Kuojah.
And he had managed to secure a meeting with the Emperor to discuss his progress in relation to the army, but Kiralo didn't know just what his plans really were in this regard. Or rather, there were all sorts of matters that he could emphasize, because there were two competing goals that he had.
The first, obviously, was to get the Emperor on his side, at least to the extent of making it less likely that he'd blindly agree to actions against him. The second was to educate the Emperor, who lacked any tutors on the nature of warfare. And in a way, Kiralo agreed with that. An Emperor who truly led armies in the field was a madman who risked far too much. The Emperor was sacred, the Empire sacrosanct, and yet he needed to at least be able to evaluate the conduct of the army.
There had been days in the ancient past where scholars and bureaucrats had led armies to great disaster, and yet the Emperor had either lacked the knowledge to judge their guilt, or in one infamous case, had simply not been told of the disaster.
So, that left many things that oculd be addressed.
What two topics are the focus of the meeting?
[] Kiralo's success in preparing the army for conflicts, as well as the actions meant to end the banditry in Irit.
[] The importance of supplies and money in warfare, especially in regards to his hoarding actions involving grain.
[] The nature of warfare in the Southlands, both to justify and explain Kiralo's focus on the light cavalry and improving them.
[] Educate him on the background and likely strategy of the war as Kiralo imagines it might begin.
[] Explain the plan to seed Irit with an army capable of checking his actions there.
[] Talk to the Emperor about horses and other interesting but non-essential topics.
[] Discuss Mages and magic, as well as spirit lore, in regards to the army and also the Emperor himself.
*****
A/N: So, here we go. Things advance yet again!
Kiralo examined the assembled nobles with a thoughtful expression. Because of course most of them were nobility. Even their equipment was a little slapdash, a little personal. Rassit units didn't forbid personal touches, but this was more as if different people had different tastes and no way to decide what was best. Their armor fit a general theme, but their bows were subtly different, more different than their size and strength should allow, and the horses…
Kiralo stepped forward towards them. Each man stood by his horse. In his hand, Kiralo had a knife and an apple, and he stalked forward in his armor towards one man's horse, cutting quickly as he did. "So. You are the light cavalry of Csirit. The arm and the eye." He offered a piece of apple to the horse, a sweet looking roan gelding who accepted it almost too gingerly. "I'd like to see you give a demonstration of that. I have set out a course for each of you to run, with multiple targets. You're to navigate it as quickly as you feel able to while still engaging with the targets."
The nobility shifted, and each man looked as if he wanted to speak. Kiralo glanced back at where he had brought a servant with a large jar filled with their names. "One by one, at random. Show me where you are, and then we'll be discussing training."
One man, short and a little stout, stepped forward. "Why do we have to do this? We have done our duty well enough, and we'll do so in times of war as well. If you want to show off your fancy Rassit skills, that's fine. You're better than us. Cs-Kiralo, that isn't some surprise, and it isn't something that--"
"Cs-Ishi," Kiralo said, drawing up the name from the many he'd memorized, "Have more faith in yourself. Anyone can grow more skilled at the art of the bow and the horse." He glanced around at the assembled crowd. "If you're afraid, we can talk about that. Right now, I merely wish to evaluate you. And then I'll be assigning exercises."
******
They were not as bad as Kiralo had feared, which was not really saying much. It was a fine spring day, hot and heavy, and he watched and had his attendants take notes. Every man had flaws, and every one of them could improve. Some were decent shots, but incredibly slow to complete the simple course. Others had speed, but watching them sit on the saddle he knew that they wouldn't stay on if pressed too hard. They'd be the ones who fell out of the saddle at the first surprise, and then were cut down by the cold-eyed infantrymen who lived to see a horsed man taken down.
Everyone knew, after all, that it was the horsemen who were princes of the battlefield. After a battle, if something was not done, Rassit and Tarnarin were looted eagerly by those for whom a battle was an opportunity.
Still others had no stamina at all. They completed the course, and looked as if they had run a hundred miles already. Not even their horses, though those were in worse shape than Kiralo had expected, but themselves. Complaining of aching arms and slouching in their seats, clearly less capable of hard work than their own steeds.
Kiralo began to walk among them, giving each a task. That was a key. He could just force them to go through archery drills, or all run and ride together, but right now, he wanted each of them to work on one thing. He wanted the terrible shots to focus on at least hitting the target, the ones with no stamina to do exercises, and he tried to keep it personal.
He knew that they resented him, but he also knew, as he strode among them, that they had expected him to call them out all as one, to yell at them or worse, to do the course himself so that they could watch and know that he was better than them. So much better than them that all of their years of learning--and the fact of the matter was many nobles could barely sit on a horse, let alone ride it, and so this was learning, this was attainment of some sort--couldn't even place them in the same league as him.
And it was true, but he didn't need to remind them of that. The sun was high, and the first step was to build up their pride. It would be tricky, and it would take time.
******
As a matter of fact, it took time and effort enough that he decided, within a week, that people with similar problems should be told of it and handled together. And that had made things easier, because the hundreds and hundreds were now divided into a dozen or so groups to deal with. And even then, when combined with the Mages, he found that he had very little free time.
Of course, free time was an illusion. Everything was working towards a purpose.
*****
"The world is changing, we all know it," Kiralo said to the assembled merchants, who knelt respectfully. He had called them here because he had managed to get some of their businesses larger permissions to continue not merely for one trade mission, but for a stream of them. "War will come. I could say that it won't, and I could assure you that even if it does, it will not impact you. But it will. But wars end. The world changes. Nobody is going to blame you specifically for a nebulous and unknown relationship with me. If, in six months, I am dead…"
Kiralo shrugged, looking over at them, a slight smile on his face, "People die. But if I am alive in a year, and I will be...have you heard the Southlander saying: 'The man on horseback can make even cities kneel?'"
There were times for humility. He was less than the Gods, he was a servant of the state, he was pious and knew that he had limits, but these were cold men, and he needed to warm them up, needed to make them see what he could offer.
"I am the man on horseback. If I win, I will be the hero who saved an Empire. If I lose, you can forget me...but if I win, who ever will forget me again? I will sit astride the court as a horse, and I will break it to bridle like the wildest stallion. And people will want horses. I need horses, the light cavalry need horses, everyone needs horses because I will demand them, because I will be in a position to act as I haven't yet."
"Stallions. Mares. Geldings. Good horses, and I will be willing to pay good prices, and think of the nobles who seek my friendship? Do you think they will not realize that I love riding more than many things in this world? Just as they might play to my poetry, just as they might attempt to emphasize their piety to me, so too will they buy horses and ride them."
The nobility had a very startling tendency to bend at the knees, despite their vaunted pride.
"And I have already given one of your tapestries to a cultured figure, who has expressed great satisfaction. I myself found them very beautiful, and would love to buy more of them."
Kiralo said, "Whether or not you wish to expand this business, my servants will lay out the banquet, and there is tea and rice wine for those who wish it, but I have gotten the permits for the import of the tapestries, and I have gotten the Messenger's office to agree ahead of time to consider purchasing any horses you send north."
Kiralo smiled and sat down, kneeling, at the table with them. "So perhaps we could have a toast to coming prosperity?"
******
"A toast! To the two greatest playwrights in all of Csirit," one drunken man bellowed. A woman, rather barely clad, hesitated to refill the glass, but the poet turned and glared at him, and in a man almost six feet tall, that was enough to convince her that it wasn't worth it trying to save him from the consequences of indulgence.
Kiralo raised his glass, glancing over at Bei'ren as he did. Yet another party, and it seemed that poets were like anyone else. Many of them liked a good drink. It made Kiralo think about Kueli, still traveling north. Even as he went north, parts of the army were going south, to put down the bandits and begin the process of pacifying Irit. The goal was simple, and Kiralo had thought the idea through.
They'd serve, besides as bandit-slayers, as an advanced force if Prince Jinhai began his march by trying to cut through Irit. A threat that would require him to be careful of being pincered or otherwise put between two armies with no way to fight them one at a time.
It was...a good plan. Kiralo was also too drunk to consider it right now.
"Give us a poem!" one of them yelled, and Kiralo waved his hand. These were not the leading poets, but Bei'ren had apparently decided that if the leading poets were going to shun him, the men who were behind the Emperor's poetry teacher and other abominations against poetry, that he'd instead win friendship with other groups.
"The drunkard's cup has a hole in it/
For what he swallows he can't stomach/
So fill it with rot, as like as not/
And, by the gods, he'll see no difference," Kiralo mumbled out, managing just barely to keep to the nine-syllable scheme.
The others laughed and tried to follow, with varying success. Kiralo smiled.
*******
The next morning, he was nursing a rather horrible headache as he read through the reports on Ha'dong. He had more people to visit, because Bei'ren had determined that the only way to win the poets of the palace was by storm, and when Kiralo had asked him with help making introductions, Bei'ren had been on it quickly enough that it was likely he'd been waiting for this.
Kiralo knew that the matter of the poets was less important than the war, but he needed to build a base in court. His posturing had not just been posturing, though there was more of that then he would have wanted to admit. But he wanted to be the power behind the throne, at least until the Emperor was grown.
So, he read about Ha'Dong. The son of an influential Basratan noble, now dead with his estate passed on to his estranged brother, he had joined the army as an officer, and did have a reputation as something of a warrior. At least, he had taken part in two notable campaigns to clear out bandits before he had traded on his connections and the downfall of the last Councilmen to enter the council and rise quickly to the top, where he had advocated the loyalty of Prince Jinhai in turning back the enemies to the east.
When the Emperor had died, he had been the man leading the charge to arrest and execute Prince Jinhai on mere suspicion of treason, and he'd almost dragged the entire country into war with his fervor. His foolish fervor. If he'd gotten what he wanted, the Empire might well be sundered and destroyed by now. Certainly, if they failed to kill Prince Jinhai quickly, or capture him, it would have only helped the Prince's cause. Since then, however, once Kuojah beat back the calls for war, he had been a constant ally in the pushes to expand and strengthen the military to prepare for war. He'd made himself indispensable, and if war came he'd be one of the few Generals on the council who might actually be able to participate more directly, since he truly was not that much older than Kiralo.
So, he was a man to watch...and possibly to reward, despite his known distaste for Kuojah.
And he had managed to secure a meeting with the Emperor to discuss his progress in relation to the army, but Kiralo didn't know just what his plans really were in this regard. Or rather, there were all sorts of matters that he could emphasize, because there were two competing goals that he had.
The first, obviously, was to get the Emperor on his side, at least to the extent of making it less likely that he'd blindly agree to actions against him. The second was to educate the Emperor, who lacked any tutors on the nature of warfare. And in a way, Kiralo agreed with that. An Emperor who truly led armies in the field was a madman who risked far too much. The Emperor was sacred, the Empire sacrosanct, and yet he needed to at least be able to evaluate the conduct of the army.
There had been days in the ancient past where scholars and bureaucrats had led armies to great disaster, and yet the Emperor had either lacked the knowledge to judge their guilt, or in one infamous case, had simply not been told of the disaster.
So, that left many things that oculd be addressed.
What two topics are the focus of the meeting?
[] Kiralo's success in preparing the army for conflicts, as well as the actions meant to end the banditry in Irit.
[] The importance of supplies and money in warfare, especially in regards to his hoarding actions involving grain.
[] The nature of warfare in the Southlands, both to justify and explain Kiralo's focus on the light cavalry and improving them.
[] Educate him on the background and likely strategy of the war as Kiralo imagines it might begin.
[] Explain the plan to seed Irit with an army capable of checking his actions there.
[] Talk to the Emperor about horses and other interesting but non-essential topics.
[] Discuss Mages and magic, as well as spirit lore, in regards to the army and also the Emperor himself.
*****
[] Friends In Poem Places
Need: 35, Rolled: 1d100+16=102 (not a crit)
[] Bows On Horses
Need: 40, Rolled: 1d100+14 (With the Martial bonus for poor rolls)=68
[] From the East
Need: ???, Rolled: 1d100+14=57
[] Put Down
Need: 40, Rolled: 1d100+14 (Martial bonus applies)=62
Need: 35, Rolled: 1d100+16=102 (not a crit)
[] Bows On Horses
Need: 40, Rolled: 1d100+14 (With the Martial bonus for poor rolls)=68
[] From the East
Need: ???, Rolled: 1d100+14=57
[] Put Down
Need: 40, Rolled: 1d100+14 (Martial bonus applies)=62
A/N: So, here we go. Things advance yet again!
[] Kiralo's success in preparing the army for conflicts, as well as the actions meant to end the banditry in Irit.
Look At What I've Done lately. Bragging can be effective, but it relies on the other party understanding what's so significant.
We've been building up supplies, starving the bandit problem from their hungry roots...these things are effective, but not glamourous.
[] The importance of supplies and money in warfare, especially in regards to his hoarding actions involving grain.
Explains why we're gathering stuff, why it's not some kind of profiteering scheme instead.
[] The nature of warfare in the Southlands, both to justify and explain Kiralo's focus on the light cavalry and improving them.
Very mixed thing. Kiralo is undeniably skilled in this area, but it emphasizes his foreignness as well.
[X] Educate him on the background and likely strategy of the war as Kiralo imagines it might begin.
Focuses on giving the Emperor a foundation to judge the war by, but risking boring him.
[] Explain the plan to seed Irit with an army capable of checking his actions there.
Fairly straightforward
[] Talk to the Emperor about horses and other interesting but non-essential topics.
Going for the Cool Stuff to grab his interest. Safe route, but it'd be much like the other courtiers have been doing already.
[X] Discuss Mages and magic, as well as spirit lore, in regards to the army and also the Emperor himself.
Also cool stuff, but it plays into our recent recruitment of shitloads of mages, demonstrating success
Look At What I've Done lately. Bragging can be effective, but it relies on the other party understanding what's so significant.
We've been building up supplies, starving the bandit problem from their hungry roots...these things are effective, but not glamourous.
[] The importance of supplies and money in warfare, especially in regards to his hoarding actions involving grain.
Explains why we're gathering stuff, why it's not some kind of profiteering scheme instead.
[] The nature of warfare in the Southlands, both to justify and explain Kiralo's focus on the light cavalry and improving them.
Very mixed thing. Kiralo is undeniably skilled in this area, but it emphasizes his foreignness as well.
[X] Educate him on the background and likely strategy of the war as Kiralo imagines it might begin.
Focuses on giving the Emperor a foundation to judge the war by, but risking boring him.
[] Explain the plan to seed Irit with an army capable of checking his actions there.
Fairly straightforward
[] Talk to the Emperor about horses and other interesting but non-essential topics.
Going for the Cool Stuff to grab his interest. Safe route, but it'd be much like the other courtiers have been doing already.
[X] Discuss Mages and magic, as well as spirit lore, in regards to the army and also the Emperor himself.
Also cool stuff, but it plays into our recent recruitment of shitloads of mages, demonstrating success
- Location
- Austria
[X] The importance of supplies and money in warfare, especially in regards to his hoarding actions involving grain.
All hail logistics!
[X] Educate him on the background and likely strategy of the war as Kiralo imagines it might begin.
...and explain what, all in all, we will be doing.
Maybe boring, but it will give him something to think about.
All hail logistics!
[X] Educate him on the background and likely strategy of the war as Kiralo imagines it might begin.
...and explain what, all in all, we will be doing.
Maybe boring, but it will give him something to think about.
[X] The importance of supplies and money in warfare, especially in regards to his hoarding actions involving grain.
[X] Discuss Mages and magic, as well as spirit lore, in regards to the army and also the Emperor himself.
The first has great utility in understanding war and understanding peace, as logistics/flow of trade is relevant for the economy and the hoarding of food is what the Empire's granaries would be doing. Thus, there is fantastic utility in teaching the Emperor about this and importantly Kuojah is unlikely to dissapprove.
The second is because we got that massive critical success on mages which is obviously a incredibly impressive accomplishment. This option should also go into the role that Mages would play in the future if they can be contracted to the Emperor which I've mentioned before as being a great way to centralize more power for the Emperor, and also the discussion of magic and spirit lore with the Emperor himself should be incredibly enlightening depending on what's hes been taught so far. He presumably has excellent teachers with regards to spirit lore, and this may also have relevance to our investigation into the previous Emperor's death given what happened with his spirits.
[X] Discuss Mages and magic, as well as spirit lore, in regards to the army and also the Emperor himself.
The first has great utility in understanding war and understanding peace, as logistics/flow of trade is relevant for the economy and the hoarding of food is what the Empire's granaries would be doing. Thus, there is fantastic utility in teaching the Emperor about this and importantly Kuojah is unlikely to dissapprove.
The second is because we got that massive critical success on mages which is obviously a incredibly impressive accomplishment. This option should also go into the role that Mages would play in the future if they can be contracted to the Emperor which I've mentioned before as being a great way to centralize more power for the Emperor, and also the discussion of magic and spirit lore with the Emperor himself should be incredibly enlightening depending on what's hes been taught so far. He presumably has excellent teachers with regards to spirit lore, and this may also have relevance to our investigation into the previous Emperor's death given what happened with his spirits.
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- Location
- ?
[X] The importance of supplies and money in warfare, especially in regards to his hoarding actions involving grain.
[X] Discuss Mages and magic, as well as spirit lore, in regards to the army and also the Emperor himself.
Magic is very yes, the other option I'm not so sure about, but logistics are important, so... *shrugs*
[X] Discuss Mages and magic, as well as spirit lore, in regards to the army and also the Emperor himself.
Magic is very yes, the other option I'm not so sure about, but logistics are important, so... *shrugs*
Zeitgeist Blue
Currently Made of Metal
- Location
- Manila, Philippines, GMT +8
[X] The importance of supplies and money in warfare, especially in regards to his hoarding actions involving grain.
[X] Discuss Mages and magic, as well as spirit lore, in regards to the army and also the Emperor himself.
[X] Discuss Mages and magic, as well as spirit lore, in regards to the army and also the Emperor himself.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Vote closes tomorrow night!
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Obvious statement, btw: Certain votes, such as 'strategy' and 'importance of logistics' also inform you, the reader, about them. Since you aren't entirely privy to Kiralo's thoughts and plans in some respects.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Vote closed, tally and d100, please?
- Location
- Spain
[X] The importance of supplies and money in warfare, especially in regards to his hoarding actions involving grain.
[X] Discuss Mages and magic, as well as spirit lore, in regards to the army and also the Emperor himself.
Uh oh.
[X] Discuss Mages and magic, as well as spirit lore, in regards to the army and also the Emperor himself.
Uh oh.
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Turn 7--Results, E
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Turn 7--Results, E
Consider power for a moment. Truly consider it, as the philosopher has, and as the scholar did, as the bureaucrat must and the Emperor will, as the merchant listens and the peasant feels it, consider it from every angle and try to divine where it forms and how it passed or transferred. It could be conferred by a patch of color, it could be murmured by a priest, a single name for a single spirit that in a moment changed the life of a poor petitioner.
It could be stolen at the point of the sword, or at the careful, soft words dripping from a brush, each dot of ink a black and final punctuation on the last day of a reign. Once, there had been many sources of power, but officially now there was only one. The font, the godhead that was the Emperor and his blood.
Like paintings made with watercolors, it had all been washed away. The old empires that had tried to oppose his holy reign, the snake people who had been exterminated, almost to the last, had been destroyed and then swept off the board.
But this wasn't true, of course. Not entirely.
Power was also that Kiralo walked without fear towards a wall without guards, and that all parties expected it.
Power was in the divide. There was outside-the-city and then there was the city and then, guarded by real walls, with real guards, there was the palace city, and then in a thousand gradations one space might denote power while another drew jeers and mocking laughter.
And then there was the Emperor's residence. The palace within a palace city, and it needed no guards, no obvious ones. Spirits patrolled the very air, brightening it and darkening it with their forms, their intricacies. Entire gardens, kept warm at all times of the year, could be found deep in this palace. Only the most trusted servants were allowed in.
Power was the division, again and again, in a thousand ways, of the Emperor from his inferiors. Which was in fact everyone alive, including one Kiralo of Lineage Ainin, who strode boldly along the cobbled path. A servant waited at the end of the path, to lead him through the tangle and confusion of the palace.
There were entire rooms that waited just in case an Emperor might desire it. The staff of the Emperor's quarters made meals for him at all hours of the day, on the off chance that he might wake up at midnight and desire food. It would be there, if he so desired it. Of course, if his tastes ran the gamut there was only so much that could be done, but no doubt they asked the Emperor his favorite foods and cheated some in the preparation. All the same...
It was a definite expense, but it was one that he deserved, and Kiralo believed that just as much as Kuojah did. He was the Emperor. He was sacred, Kiralo thought, goggling in pure wonder at some of the rooms.
Vast warrens of rooms, gilded or with jade statues, or paintings exquisitely crafted on a wall that was otherwise unimportant. Rooms for no purpose at all, and other rooms that could be converted all at once into an audience chamber.
For, in all this world, there was a final division. Few enough could visit the Imperial Residence at all, but the few inner chambers in which the Emperor and his sisters slept were sacred.
Only guards, servants or, on the rarest of all occasions, high government officials, ever ventured there. It was a place for the family and the family alone. Kuojah had walked there, in his fine robes, one fine summer morning.
He had frowned and arranged his face into placid concern and told a young boy that his father was dead, and that he was now Emperor. Had the girls cried and clung to the young boy? Had they run off, furious and terrified at the world and the Gods?
Had they piously prayed, and had they found that the answer was that the Gods had ordered the world, and yet men must take credit for their actions in a world that they acted within.
Under heaven, all men rested. And under heaven, Kiralo of Lineage Ainin was brought before his Emperor in a small, out of the way room. The boy was perched on a blue cushion, on a silver seat, looking somewhat bored as two servants knelt at either side of him, one of them holding a scroll for him to look at. Behind him was a guard, and in the corner, three different secretaries. All at his command. In theory at least.
For the Emperor was a boy, and power was a practical thing as well.
Respect, however.
Kiralo knelt, threw himself to the ground, wondering if he should have dressed as a soldier, even if he would of course not be allowed to be armed. The guard was dressed in blue and silver, a red, worm-like spirit slipping in and out of his armor, peeking out at the world, curious as always. A spirit to sniff the air, a spirit to sniff out trouble, and those were always the sorts of spirits that were hard to manage.
"I come with reports," he said, quietly, "In regards to the job you have entrusted me, oh Emperor, and I shall leave them to your persual, and yet I wished as well to speak of what has been done, and what there is still to do."
"You may speak," The boy, Dai'so, said. His voice was level, careful, calm. He had already been trained socially, and yet he also smiled when he saw Kiralo.
Kiralo, whose face was the mask that any courtier held. He could not hold the mask up yet, not at the age of seven, headed towards eight.
"There are two matters especially to bring up. The first are Mages. You know what magic and spirits are, that I know well. Your tutors have taught you how to feel the spirits, and how to understand what they are."
"They have," Dai'so allowed, as others rested their eyes on them. Back and forth.
"Magic is central to warfare. I do not know what you have been taught, but without the spirits, we are blind, dumb and deaf, and without the spirits the soldier is left exhausted on the side of the road. Everyone knows spirit-lore, and soldiers know that which suits them." Kiralo paused and said, "And this is the heart of it. The heart of so many problems. But beyond this, I have convinced quite a few Mages to hire themselves out to the army, and so if a conflict comes, when a conflict comes--"
"Tell me, Cs-Kiralo, do you think it will be war?" Dai'so didn't betray anxiety in his face, but the boy didn't need to. He had spoken, he had interrupted Kiralo, and not in an attitude of presumption (since of course he had the right to interrupt anyone) but instead like someone rushing the fence on horseback for fear that he would not ask it later.
"It will be. And the Mages I have been able to hire will be important for that, which is why I am requesting a raise in funds, in fact. The more Mages and skilled users of spirit we have, the more flexibility there is. Certain things cannot be solved." Kiralo shook his head, "This late, we cannot train men beyond the basics. Give the peasant soldiers the spirits they need and weapons fitting for them, or recruit men already trained, but we cannot make a man into an elite soldier. It's not an easy process...but we can ask for more Mages."
"This...makes sense," Dai'so allowed, frowning.
"I know the details might not sound all that interesting, but these are men who can shoot fire from their fingers and leap through the air like birds," Kiralo said with a smile.
Dai'so paused, and added, frowning, "One of the other boys said that you fought one of them and won."
"Practice hones a man, and so I did have a small spar with a Mage," Kiralo conceded, quietly, and allowed the space between the words to fill with visions that were no doubt rather more impressive than barely managing to beat the young man. "But the more important thing is that the army is ready to fulfill your will."
"My will?" the young Emperor asked, biting his lip and then leaning in, "What do you propose we do with an army? I mean, I've never ordered one around, and Cs-Kuojah...your father, he said that it was a very boring topic."
"It can be," Kiralo said, not raising his eyes all the way, and yet glimpsing genuine curiosity on the Emperor's face. "Logistics especially can be, if you have to do all of the math and make sure that everything is right."
Kiralo grinned, playfully, at the look on the Emperor's face. He clearly hadn't enjoyed the mathematics tutoring he'd had so far. The Emperor flushed a little, like...well, like a child caught out, his mask crumbling just enough for him to say, "Math."
Then, he managed to pull a mask together and said, "Would you like to rise to your knees, Cs-Kiralo?"
"Thank you, Serenity," Kiralo said, and then carefully judged the moment. One day the Emperor might learn to use the tricky double-question on his enemies. Once when he was twenty, he'd been asked something like that by a Prince, only to be scolded when he'd risen to his knees, because he'd merely been asked if he'd like to, not given permission.
But now he thought on it and rose slowly, ready to throw himself down if his intimation was wrong.
"Servants," the Emperor said, "Please bring me...food. Something to snack on. And Cs-Kiralo as well."
"There is a secret, one that can be used even beyond numbers," Kiralo said, "If one wants to know how to deal with logistics. In an army, logistics is complicated. All of those people going here and there, and more than that, the wagons make a target, and yet all of this pales in comparison to one thing. Being ready for the future...and talking to men."
"Talking?"
"If a man is not loyal and is corrupt, then no matter your skill or lack thereof, you would be pouring water into a pool that has no bottom," Kiralo said, paraphrasing a famous saying, "Your Serenity no doubt already knows this, but your great-great-great-great-granduncle, I believe, wrote a short volume on the matter."
"Oh?" the Emperor asked, and Kiralo could see a little interest fading.
"It's all a matter of being friendly and knowing who you are, for one," Kiralo said. "You are Emperor. If you wish to act, you need only act, and the world in this court will shape itself for you. And yet you cannot do everything yourself. So you must always ask: do I trust this man, and how much do I trust him? Then you ask: what are his skills, how might he be wisely used?"
Dai'so bit his lip. "How might you be wisely used, Cs-Kiralo?" he asked, as honey balls were brought in on two trays, along with the chopsticks to eat them with.
"That will take time to explain, and time is the dearest resource at all. If a man learns nothing at all, if he cannot manage his time, then all of his other talents are as an empty pond at the height of summer," Kiralo said.
"I can spare a little time," Dai'so said, "For someone who is so...newly my Envoy."
Kiralo smiled and plucked a single honey dumpling from the plate. Rice, mixed in honey, nuts, and a little bit of fruit sometimes, and then wrapped in a fried ball of dough, crispy and flaky as he bit into it very carefully. Many suspected that it was a dish that had some Southlander influence. If so, Kiralo liked it all the more for that. Once his mouth was empty, he began, "So, the Csiritan army relies on its roads to transport goods, and thus it is in some ways predictable, and in others--"
*******
On a rainy spring day, Kiralo reflected as he stood under pillars to watch the arrival of a young man, silence could be power. The young man had not spoken any word of what he'd seen, though he'd been examined for fear that his mind might have turned rotten in the meantime, or that he might intend or be used as an attack on the Emperor.
He was clean, and so now he was going to come for a meeting the next day the Kiralo was not invited to, and was not interested in, either.
Hiro of Lineage Usini was a strong, strapping young man, though he seemed thin now, stretched. Too person for too little skin, even in the robes that concealed much of his body. His hair was long, and braided thickly, even carefully, but he also had a beard, and not a small, well-trimmed one, but one that reminded Kiralo of the Anlan he had known, who tended to grow beards that were thick, not shaving it down like even most Southlanders.
Thick, and often yellow, like corn, and that was when they didn't soak it in strange oils...the Anlan were a strange people, though his experiences in the Southlands proved the lie to at least some of what was said of them. In the Southland at least, the Anlan bathed at least three or four times a week, like all people did.
Hiro had a certain look about his face, ragged and rugged, that reminded him of a weathered Anlan trader he'd once met, and there was something in the way he walked that was…
It seemed familiar, or perhaps it was just something he wanted to be familiar. Purpose, certainty. He was someone who walked without looking either way, as if he knew where he'd step. Kiralo wished his luck and turned, only to collapse.
Pain ripped through him, his skull almost splitting, his arms flailing in sudden wild panic as he tried to draw his sword. His heart raced, and he lay there on the ground, unnoticed, for almost five seconds before his limbs started working again.
Sweat now soaked his whole body, and there was a voice. 'That' Aiyistin said. 'That is one reason why. To see him. To hear.'
...Hiro was one of the reasons that the spirit had chosen him?
Kiralo got up, heart racing, and made demands. And then promises. Anything it took. If the Ten Judges thought it of import, he would be there.
*******
On the day that the entire history of the world was rewritten, Kiralo knelt by his father, in a room that had no servants. Only guards, Kiralo, Kuojah, and one priest, and a single scribe. And the Emperor of course, surrounded by guards.
It was a lesser audience room, not in the Imperial Residence, but judged more intimate than the Imperial Seat, and Kiralo knew that this was the result of long wrangling on both sides.
"May I speak, Emperor Dai'so?" Hiro asked, his voice strange to Kiralo's ear. Someone so confident shouldn't have sounded so high, so reedy, like the young man he was. Young, and untried, some had said, for all that he had a reputation as a man of dash and daring.
"You may," The Emperor said, and Kiralo paid close attention, as he felt a stabbing pain across his neck, skittering down his back. But he kept the mask in place.
"So, I have long had foolish ideas. In fact, your Serenity, my father said I was a fool to even think on it, but there was one place that always drew me. The mountains. We cannot go far in them, before wind and storms turn us back, and every expedition has failed to return if it went too far, or come back mad, raving of stories that are too nonsensical to believe."
He paused and bit his lip, "But I found, in an old archive, a stained, worn copy of a copy of a map. It showed a trail, one that I knew had not been tried before, and it contained as well a fossil-stone of some sort, that seemed to resonate with spiritual energy and yet held no waking spirit. There were other trinkets, and I took them and thought to try this old pass, because it was written in a language half-dead. Hundreds of years out of date, and saying it was but a mere translation. Ignored, no doubt."
"What language?" Kuojah asked, carefully.
"Histander," Hiro explained. Then he shook his head, "So we journeyed forth, and once we hit a certain point, everything began to go wrong, as it did for every other expedition. We lost food, people died. Good friends, torn from me far too early, until I was the last one left, trekking, exhausted and afraid, across mountains that pierced the very clouds. There was great beauty, but...ask a man later and he can see it, but at the time he labors for his every breath. At the time he hopes that death will not be painful as he treks forward."
"Blowing, blowing, howling," Hiro said, and I was holding the fossil, gripping it madly...and then I felt it. The warmth from it. And a name, whispered into the dark recesses of my mind. And I whispered the name once, and the snow died down, and I whispered it again and the path seemed clear, and I whispered it again and my desire for death evaporated."
He hesitated, "I still nearly died. But I was found, found by a people who lived beneath the mountains and in the mountains, who had fused with spirits of ice and stone to become strong, powerful people whose skin was like the blubber of some animal, some of them, as tall as an Anlan, and others who were shorter than us, but with white skin, but not like an Anlan's…"
He trailed off. "You think it madness, but I think that the spirit name somehow gave me a pass, and they thought so too, for they did not think the place so harsh and cruel, and while I traveled with them their luck was far better than that of my friends. They have cities down there beneath the earth, and villages, at the lower altitudes. I do not think there are many. If in the entire range, there were a million such people, then I would be shocked. Probably far fewer, for their largest cities pale in comparison to ours."
Everyone was staring now, leaning forward. Kiralo hoped he was not simply making things up, because this seemed fascinating.
"It was so cold that spirits froze into crystals that they could use for magic, it was...I saw so many things that would shock and astound anyone, and with the name, I think I could lead a trading expedition back to see what there is and prove it." He coughed, "But that's not why I'm here."
Dai'so was staring, wide eyed, "Then why?"
"While I was talking, I heard many references to an green empire, somehow kept almost warm in the midst of valleys in the mountains, of millions of people. They would not visit it, though they sometimes traded with it."
Kiralo's pain redoubled, and then he could see nothing. Eyes, sightless. A single word, the symbol carefully drawn, appeared in his view, white on black, corpse on ghost…
'Judgement.'
And then the word began to repeat, to fill his dark vision, and he had to keep from screaming, from thrashing and writhing.
"They called it…"
Sometimes silence had power, and sometimes words had power.
"The Empire of the Snake People, among other things."
*****
Xissand had fallen, their heresies driven out, their people enslaved or brought to kneel, over a thousand years ago. Empires had risen, empires had fallen.
And the next Emperor had declared that perhaps it was a mistake to be so harsh. To kill hundreds of thousands in the bloody purges after the end of the war. For decades, he coddled them close, and some asked whether his last three years were the end of some master plan to catch them off guard, or if perhaps he had merely changed his mind.
But the Emperor had gathered a vast library of Xissand work, had resettled the Xissand into their own villages, as long as they would accept the authority of the Emperor and abandon their heresies and intermingling with snake spirits. And then in the last three years, pyres were lit.
He ordered that all men, women, and children of Xissand were to be killed. And their books burned, their language purged.
Nobody spoke Xissand anymore. Nobody could read it either, the few samples that were left. It had taken him three years, and no doubt some hid and ran, or had already mingled with the people of the Empire, had already influenced thing...but most died.
There was no way to guess at the numbers. Hundreds of thousands? More.
Xissand died as all but a memory, and the Emperor has passed away with a smile on his lips, beloved by his many sons as a kind and generous man.
Xissand was gone.
******
His vision was restored all at once, and Kuojah was standing. "Impossible, it!"
"I...father," Kiralo said, quietly, "I do not think it is impossible. I think…"
A thousand years? More than a thousand years!
"Tell no one," Kuojah said, "This is to remain secret while we consider this…"
And yet, the Emperor leapt forward, eyes now rounder than Kiralo had ever seen it, and any attempt to restore even the semblance of order was lost as priests and scholars babbled at once and the young Emperor, striding across the room, pelted questions like rain down upon Hiro.
The world had shifted beneath their feet.
If it was true...everything was changed. And nothing.
What Does Kiralo do with this info? (Choose 1)
[] Try to prepare the way for Kuojah to approve some sort of...expedition. Because the look on Hiro's face...he's going to go, no matter who is Emperor.
[] Try to talk to Hiro and learn more about his experiences with these barbarians...and any rumors he might hear.
[] Attempt to engage Hiro in the politics of Hari-Nat...now might be a chance to influence the civil war, but, at the same time…
[] Consult the priests regarding the...vision of sorts Kiralo just had.
******
A/N: So, uh, yeah!
Consider power for a moment. Truly consider it, as the philosopher has, and as the scholar did, as the bureaucrat must and the Emperor will, as the merchant listens and the peasant feels it, consider it from every angle and try to divine where it forms and how it passed or transferred. It could be conferred by a patch of color, it could be murmured by a priest, a single name for a single spirit that in a moment changed the life of a poor petitioner.
It could be stolen at the point of the sword, or at the careful, soft words dripping from a brush, each dot of ink a black and final punctuation on the last day of a reign. Once, there had been many sources of power, but officially now there was only one. The font, the godhead that was the Emperor and his blood.
Like paintings made with watercolors, it had all been washed away. The old empires that had tried to oppose his holy reign, the snake people who had been exterminated, almost to the last, had been destroyed and then swept off the board.
But this wasn't true, of course. Not entirely.
Power was also that Kiralo walked without fear towards a wall without guards, and that all parties expected it.
Power was in the divide. There was outside-the-city and then there was the city and then, guarded by real walls, with real guards, there was the palace city, and then in a thousand gradations one space might denote power while another drew jeers and mocking laughter.
And then there was the Emperor's residence. The palace within a palace city, and it needed no guards, no obvious ones. Spirits patrolled the very air, brightening it and darkening it with their forms, their intricacies. Entire gardens, kept warm at all times of the year, could be found deep in this palace. Only the most trusted servants were allowed in.
Power was the division, again and again, in a thousand ways, of the Emperor from his inferiors. Which was in fact everyone alive, including one Kiralo of Lineage Ainin, who strode boldly along the cobbled path. A servant waited at the end of the path, to lead him through the tangle and confusion of the palace.
There were entire rooms that waited just in case an Emperor might desire it. The staff of the Emperor's quarters made meals for him at all hours of the day, on the off chance that he might wake up at midnight and desire food. It would be there, if he so desired it. Of course, if his tastes ran the gamut there was only so much that could be done, but no doubt they asked the Emperor his favorite foods and cheated some in the preparation. All the same...
It was a definite expense, but it was one that he deserved, and Kiralo believed that just as much as Kuojah did. He was the Emperor. He was sacred, Kiralo thought, goggling in pure wonder at some of the rooms.
Vast warrens of rooms, gilded or with jade statues, or paintings exquisitely crafted on a wall that was otherwise unimportant. Rooms for no purpose at all, and other rooms that could be converted all at once into an audience chamber.
For, in all this world, there was a final division. Few enough could visit the Imperial Residence at all, but the few inner chambers in which the Emperor and his sisters slept were sacred.
Only guards, servants or, on the rarest of all occasions, high government officials, ever ventured there. It was a place for the family and the family alone. Kuojah had walked there, in his fine robes, one fine summer morning.
He had frowned and arranged his face into placid concern and told a young boy that his father was dead, and that he was now Emperor. Had the girls cried and clung to the young boy? Had they run off, furious and terrified at the world and the Gods?
Had they piously prayed, and had they found that the answer was that the Gods had ordered the world, and yet men must take credit for their actions in a world that they acted within.
Under heaven, all men rested. And under heaven, Kiralo of Lineage Ainin was brought before his Emperor in a small, out of the way room. The boy was perched on a blue cushion, on a silver seat, looking somewhat bored as two servants knelt at either side of him, one of them holding a scroll for him to look at. Behind him was a guard, and in the corner, three different secretaries. All at his command. In theory at least.
For the Emperor was a boy, and power was a practical thing as well.
Respect, however.
Kiralo knelt, threw himself to the ground, wondering if he should have dressed as a soldier, even if he would of course not be allowed to be armed. The guard was dressed in blue and silver, a red, worm-like spirit slipping in and out of his armor, peeking out at the world, curious as always. A spirit to sniff the air, a spirit to sniff out trouble, and those were always the sorts of spirits that were hard to manage.
"I come with reports," he said, quietly, "In regards to the job you have entrusted me, oh Emperor, and I shall leave them to your persual, and yet I wished as well to speak of what has been done, and what there is still to do."
"You may speak," The boy, Dai'so, said. His voice was level, careful, calm. He had already been trained socially, and yet he also smiled when he saw Kiralo.
Kiralo, whose face was the mask that any courtier held. He could not hold the mask up yet, not at the age of seven, headed towards eight.
"There are two matters especially to bring up. The first are Mages. You know what magic and spirits are, that I know well. Your tutors have taught you how to feel the spirits, and how to understand what they are."
"They have," Dai'so allowed, as others rested their eyes on them. Back and forth.
"Magic is central to warfare. I do not know what you have been taught, but without the spirits, we are blind, dumb and deaf, and without the spirits the soldier is left exhausted on the side of the road. Everyone knows spirit-lore, and soldiers know that which suits them." Kiralo paused and said, "And this is the heart of it. The heart of so many problems. But beyond this, I have convinced quite a few Mages to hire themselves out to the army, and so if a conflict comes, when a conflict comes--"
"Tell me, Cs-Kiralo, do you think it will be war?" Dai'so didn't betray anxiety in his face, but the boy didn't need to. He had spoken, he had interrupted Kiralo, and not in an attitude of presumption (since of course he had the right to interrupt anyone) but instead like someone rushing the fence on horseback for fear that he would not ask it later.
"It will be. And the Mages I have been able to hire will be important for that, which is why I am requesting a raise in funds, in fact. The more Mages and skilled users of spirit we have, the more flexibility there is. Certain things cannot be solved." Kiralo shook his head, "This late, we cannot train men beyond the basics. Give the peasant soldiers the spirits they need and weapons fitting for them, or recruit men already trained, but we cannot make a man into an elite soldier. It's not an easy process...but we can ask for more Mages."
"This...makes sense," Dai'so allowed, frowning.
"I know the details might not sound all that interesting, but these are men who can shoot fire from their fingers and leap through the air like birds," Kiralo said with a smile.
Dai'so paused, and added, frowning, "One of the other boys said that you fought one of them and won."
"Practice hones a man, and so I did have a small spar with a Mage," Kiralo conceded, quietly, and allowed the space between the words to fill with visions that were no doubt rather more impressive than barely managing to beat the young man. "But the more important thing is that the army is ready to fulfill your will."
"My will?" the young Emperor asked, biting his lip and then leaning in, "What do you propose we do with an army? I mean, I've never ordered one around, and Cs-Kuojah...your father, he said that it was a very boring topic."
"It can be," Kiralo said, not raising his eyes all the way, and yet glimpsing genuine curiosity on the Emperor's face. "Logistics especially can be, if you have to do all of the math and make sure that everything is right."
Kiralo grinned, playfully, at the look on the Emperor's face. He clearly hadn't enjoyed the mathematics tutoring he'd had so far. The Emperor flushed a little, like...well, like a child caught out, his mask crumbling just enough for him to say, "Math."
Then, he managed to pull a mask together and said, "Would you like to rise to your knees, Cs-Kiralo?"
"Thank you, Serenity," Kiralo said, and then carefully judged the moment. One day the Emperor might learn to use the tricky double-question on his enemies. Once when he was twenty, he'd been asked something like that by a Prince, only to be scolded when he'd risen to his knees, because he'd merely been asked if he'd like to, not given permission.
But now he thought on it and rose slowly, ready to throw himself down if his intimation was wrong.
"Servants," the Emperor said, "Please bring me...food. Something to snack on. And Cs-Kiralo as well."
"There is a secret, one that can be used even beyond numbers," Kiralo said, "If one wants to know how to deal with logistics. In an army, logistics is complicated. All of those people going here and there, and more than that, the wagons make a target, and yet all of this pales in comparison to one thing. Being ready for the future...and talking to men."
"Talking?"
"If a man is not loyal and is corrupt, then no matter your skill or lack thereof, you would be pouring water into a pool that has no bottom," Kiralo said, paraphrasing a famous saying, "Your Serenity no doubt already knows this, but your great-great-great-great-granduncle, I believe, wrote a short volume on the matter."
"Oh?" the Emperor asked, and Kiralo could see a little interest fading.
"It's all a matter of being friendly and knowing who you are, for one," Kiralo said. "You are Emperor. If you wish to act, you need only act, and the world in this court will shape itself for you. And yet you cannot do everything yourself. So you must always ask: do I trust this man, and how much do I trust him? Then you ask: what are his skills, how might he be wisely used?"
Dai'so bit his lip. "How might you be wisely used, Cs-Kiralo?" he asked, as honey balls were brought in on two trays, along with the chopsticks to eat them with.
"That will take time to explain, and time is the dearest resource at all. If a man learns nothing at all, if he cannot manage his time, then all of his other talents are as an empty pond at the height of summer," Kiralo said.
"I can spare a little time," Dai'so said, "For someone who is so...newly my Envoy."
Kiralo smiled and plucked a single honey dumpling from the plate. Rice, mixed in honey, nuts, and a little bit of fruit sometimes, and then wrapped in a fried ball of dough, crispy and flaky as he bit into it very carefully. Many suspected that it was a dish that had some Southlander influence. If so, Kiralo liked it all the more for that. Once his mouth was empty, he began, "So, the Csiritan army relies on its roads to transport goods, and thus it is in some ways predictable, and in others--"
*******
On a rainy spring day, Kiralo reflected as he stood under pillars to watch the arrival of a young man, silence could be power. The young man had not spoken any word of what he'd seen, though he'd been examined for fear that his mind might have turned rotten in the meantime, or that he might intend or be used as an attack on the Emperor.
He was clean, and so now he was going to come for a meeting the next day the Kiralo was not invited to, and was not interested in, either.
Hiro of Lineage Usini was a strong, strapping young man, though he seemed thin now, stretched. Too person for too little skin, even in the robes that concealed much of his body. His hair was long, and braided thickly, even carefully, but he also had a beard, and not a small, well-trimmed one, but one that reminded Kiralo of the Anlan he had known, who tended to grow beards that were thick, not shaving it down like even most Southlanders.
Thick, and often yellow, like corn, and that was when they didn't soak it in strange oils...the Anlan were a strange people, though his experiences in the Southlands proved the lie to at least some of what was said of them. In the Southland at least, the Anlan bathed at least three or four times a week, like all people did.
Hiro had a certain look about his face, ragged and rugged, that reminded him of a weathered Anlan trader he'd once met, and there was something in the way he walked that was…
It seemed familiar, or perhaps it was just something he wanted to be familiar. Purpose, certainty. He was someone who walked without looking either way, as if he knew where he'd step. Kiralo wished his luck and turned, only to collapse.
Pain ripped through him, his skull almost splitting, his arms flailing in sudden wild panic as he tried to draw his sword. His heart raced, and he lay there on the ground, unnoticed, for almost five seconds before his limbs started working again.
Sweat now soaked his whole body, and there was a voice. 'That' Aiyistin said. 'That is one reason why. To see him. To hear.'
...Hiro was one of the reasons that the spirit had chosen him?
Kiralo got up, heart racing, and made demands. And then promises. Anything it took. If the Ten Judges thought it of import, he would be there.
*******
On the day that the entire history of the world was rewritten, Kiralo knelt by his father, in a room that had no servants. Only guards, Kiralo, Kuojah, and one priest, and a single scribe. And the Emperor of course, surrounded by guards.
It was a lesser audience room, not in the Imperial Residence, but judged more intimate than the Imperial Seat, and Kiralo knew that this was the result of long wrangling on both sides.
"May I speak, Emperor Dai'so?" Hiro asked, his voice strange to Kiralo's ear. Someone so confident shouldn't have sounded so high, so reedy, like the young man he was. Young, and untried, some had said, for all that he had a reputation as a man of dash and daring.
"You may," The Emperor said, and Kiralo paid close attention, as he felt a stabbing pain across his neck, skittering down his back. But he kept the mask in place.
"So, I have long had foolish ideas. In fact, your Serenity, my father said I was a fool to even think on it, but there was one place that always drew me. The mountains. We cannot go far in them, before wind and storms turn us back, and every expedition has failed to return if it went too far, or come back mad, raving of stories that are too nonsensical to believe."
He paused and bit his lip, "But I found, in an old archive, a stained, worn copy of a copy of a map. It showed a trail, one that I knew had not been tried before, and it contained as well a fossil-stone of some sort, that seemed to resonate with spiritual energy and yet held no waking spirit. There were other trinkets, and I took them and thought to try this old pass, because it was written in a language half-dead. Hundreds of years out of date, and saying it was but a mere translation. Ignored, no doubt."
"What language?" Kuojah asked, carefully.
"Histander," Hiro explained. Then he shook his head, "So we journeyed forth, and once we hit a certain point, everything began to go wrong, as it did for every other expedition. We lost food, people died. Good friends, torn from me far too early, until I was the last one left, trekking, exhausted and afraid, across mountains that pierced the very clouds. There was great beauty, but...ask a man later and he can see it, but at the time he labors for his every breath. At the time he hopes that death will not be painful as he treks forward."
"Blowing, blowing, howling," Hiro said, and I was holding the fossil, gripping it madly...and then I felt it. The warmth from it. And a name, whispered into the dark recesses of my mind. And I whispered the name once, and the snow died down, and I whispered it again and the path seemed clear, and I whispered it again and my desire for death evaporated."
He hesitated, "I still nearly died. But I was found, found by a people who lived beneath the mountains and in the mountains, who had fused with spirits of ice and stone to become strong, powerful people whose skin was like the blubber of some animal, some of them, as tall as an Anlan, and others who were shorter than us, but with white skin, but not like an Anlan's…"
He trailed off. "You think it madness, but I think that the spirit name somehow gave me a pass, and they thought so too, for they did not think the place so harsh and cruel, and while I traveled with them their luck was far better than that of my friends. They have cities down there beneath the earth, and villages, at the lower altitudes. I do not think there are many. If in the entire range, there were a million such people, then I would be shocked. Probably far fewer, for their largest cities pale in comparison to ours."
Everyone was staring now, leaning forward. Kiralo hoped he was not simply making things up, because this seemed fascinating.
"It was so cold that spirits froze into crystals that they could use for magic, it was...I saw so many things that would shock and astound anyone, and with the name, I think I could lead a trading expedition back to see what there is and prove it." He coughed, "But that's not why I'm here."
Dai'so was staring, wide eyed, "Then why?"
"While I was talking, I heard many references to an green empire, somehow kept almost warm in the midst of valleys in the mountains, of millions of people. They would not visit it, though they sometimes traded with it."
Kiralo's pain redoubled, and then he could see nothing. Eyes, sightless. A single word, the symbol carefully drawn, appeared in his view, white on black, corpse on ghost…
'Judgement.'
And then the word began to repeat, to fill his dark vision, and he had to keep from screaming, from thrashing and writhing.
"They called it…"
Sometimes silence had power, and sometimes words had power.
"The Empire of the Snake People, among other things."
*****
Xissand had fallen, their heresies driven out, their people enslaved or brought to kneel, over a thousand years ago. Empires had risen, empires had fallen.
And the next Emperor had declared that perhaps it was a mistake to be so harsh. To kill hundreds of thousands in the bloody purges after the end of the war. For decades, he coddled them close, and some asked whether his last three years were the end of some master plan to catch them off guard, or if perhaps he had merely changed his mind.
But the Emperor had gathered a vast library of Xissand work, had resettled the Xissand into their own villages, as long as they would accept the authority of the Emperor and abandon their heresies and intermingling with snake spirits. And then in the last three years, pyres were lit.
He ordered that all men, women, and children of Xissand were to be killed. And their books burned, their language purged.
Nobody spoke Xissand anymore. Nobody could read it either, the few samples that were left. It had taken him three years, and no doubt some hid and ran, or had already mingled with the people of the Empire, had already influenced thing...but most died.
There was no way to guess at the numbers. Hundreds of thousands? More.
Xissand died as all but a memory, and the Emperor has passed away with a smile on his lips, beloved by his many sons as a kind and generous man.
Xissand was gone.
******
His vision was restored all at once, and Kuojah was standing. "Impossible, it!"
"I...father," Kiralo said, quietly, "I do not think it is impossible. I think…"
A thousand years? More than a thousand years!
"Tell no one," Kuojah said, "This is to remain secret while we consider this…"
And yet, the Emperor leapt forward, eyes now rounder than Kiralo had ever seen it, and any attempt to restore even the semblance of order was lost as priests and scholars babbled at once and the young Emperor, striding across the room, pelted questions like rain down upon Hiro.
The world had shifted beneath their feet.
If it was true...everything was changed. And nothing.
What Does Kiralo do with this info? (Choose 1)
[] Try to prepare the way for Kuojah to approve some sort of...expedition. Because the look on Hiro's face...he's going to go, no matter who is Emperor.
[] Try to talk to Hiro and learn more about his experiences with these barbarians...and any rumors he might hear.
[] Attempt to engage Hiro in the politics of Hari-Nat...now might be a chance to influence the civil war, but, at the same time…
[] Consult the priests regarding the...vision of sorts Kiralo just had.
[] For What Purpose?
Need: 40, Rolled: 1d100+12+4=110 (not a crit)
[] Reporting to the Emperor
Need: 30, Rolled: 1d100+12=71
x[] A Northern Excuse
Need: 35, Rolled: 1d100+12=16...and a reroll gained from the above (Purpose): 40
Need: 40, Rolled: 1d100+12+4=110 (not a crit)
[] Reporting to the Emperor
Need: 30, Rolled: 1d100+12=71
x[] A Northern Excuse
Need: 35, Rolled: 1d100+12=16...and a reroll gained from the above (Purpose): 40
******
A/N: So, uh, yeah!
- Location
- ?
Huh. Okay.
So I thought the talk with the Emperor went pretty well, to the point where I expected a higher roll.
The snek ppl thing is.. unexpected. Leaning towards the first option, and nope on talking to priests. No matter the insight they might offer, this is to be kept a secret.
So I thought the talk with the Emperor went pretty well, to the point where I expected a higher roll.
The snek ppl thing is.. unexpected. Leaning towards the first option, and nope on talking to priests. No matter the insight they might offer, this is to be kept a secret.