[Exalted] Heaven thy Home and Earth thy Slave

[Chehrazad]

O Keinginan-i-Gehan, thou jewel of the West, what miserable destitution you have fallen into. Once, you reigned gracefully over all the gleaming blue and adorned yourself with your honours and victories like ornaments and jewelry, and the Shoguns resided within your halls both graceful and magnanimous. You kissed the seas of the South and West and left them gifts of artistry, poetry and scholarship and now you are an empty husk. Where once resided Shoguns reside now fatuous pretenders who waste away their lives in smoke-filled chambers and make a mockery of the once-glorious Peacock Dais. Such a dreadful sickness that has come upon the Queen of All Cities lay with its roots in the decadence of its majesties. For where our Scarlet Empress rules by the grace of the dragons and has never raised the spear, in this Shogunate of Monkeys, the mighty monarchs were first and foremost military minds who now know not the voice of soldiers, nor the grace of majesty…

-Cathak Mudaha, The Frontier Annals, Realm Year 683 in the Reign of the Scarlet Empress​

Born on the eighth day of the day-cycle as Eight Vermillion Holiest Gift by name in the Amber-and-Topaz Chamber to your mother the Great Commander of the Armies against Barbarians, by title the Shogun-Banu and by name Six Gold Gentle Palm. Your birth was attended to by commanders, nobles and many dignitaries from foreign nations, coming even from the distant Scarlet Dynasty and further beyond. A comet marked the occasion and historians recorded your silence at birth as a mark of a true coming ruler. From a young age, you sat with your mother wearing white makeup of lead and vinegar, water and stranger ingredients still. You were taught to stride like rulers do and to keep your face like a mask like rulers also do. You learnt arithmetic and astronomy, geometry and grammar, music, logic and the rhetoric of rulership. And yours were a gown of yellow bearing precious amber and pearls from all the world and the firestones of the deep sea.

From birth, you were raised with the understanding that one day, in those scented chambers of the Shogunal Porcelain Divan. You would come to inherit all the lands of the Western Shogunate, which foreigners knew by its blue monkey banner. And so, in ignorance, they named it the Blue Monkey Shogunate, not knowing your illustrious history or your imperial bearing. And one day—your servants would tell you in a room scented richly with incense—all the lands of the Western Shogunate would come to rest under your imperial hand once again, singing your name and their rulers in rags begging you for forgiveness that they had forsaken the Shogun-Banu of all the West. You have often dreamt of that moment, thinking to yourself that you would kindly forgive them, that you would take them under your rulership once again and then rule wisely and happily for the next thousand years in glory.

But for now that dream must remain a dream. The Shogunate that you are owed is poor and its riches are all but spent. Two hundred years ago, the Scarlet Empress of the Realm burnt Keinginan-i-Gehan and let the fires burn until your empire was nothing but ash and bitter memories. The Shogunate broke, treacherous lordlings turning tail as you were left behind; the rulers of hovels in the streets and markets of your ancient city growing like weeds among cobbles. Now you make your imperial seat in this city of towns pretending at cityship sprung up within walls once considered impregnable. But it will not always be so. Upon your birth, astrological savants and scholars made a horoscope, analyzing by clever means your day cycle and your year cycle and the signs of the heavens. One day, they say, you will take your place.

But that day is not yet. For now, your days are spent with the minutiae of court and the affairs of the Shogunal Divan, in which you were raised, taught and from which you will one day rule. As the imperial heir, you take second place in heading the ladies' court—the Darbare Khatunan—and surround yourself perpetually with a small army of serving staff, ladies-in-waiting, attendants and scribes. While every imperial heir has maintained such a miniature inner court to prepare them for the duties of heading a true court upon their accession to the Peacock Dais, it is not uncommon to also find close friends among such a retainership. In the incense-scented chambers of the court, you can always confide in:

Article:

[ ] Thirteen Silver Peaceful Breath: As close to you as a sister, Peaceful Breath has been with you for most of your life. Though she seems unapproachable and icy, Peaceful Breath was born mute and communicates exclusively through the language of Shogunal Sign. With her tall, gangly stature and bone-white hair she cuts an intimidating figure, seeming a witch out of myth in conservatively styled batik robes and undecorated chlamys fastened with a simple tablion. Born and named on the accursed day of Bulan, belonging to the moon, Peaceful Breath has always been sickly and weak, something she deeply resents being pitied for. On the contrary, this exact perception of weakness permits her to collect immense amounts of information; people often seem to forget that muteness does not mean deafness.

[ ] Three Red Rising Song: Effectively your informal bodyguard, Three Red Rising Song is a close—if argumentative—friend. From a family originally hailing east of the Firepeaks, Rising Song is short with dark skin and her golden hair in a long braid; a strong contrast to her fire-red bodo blouse. Seemingly easygoing and calm, you know Rising Song to be one of the most argumentative and stubborn people alive, something that is just as much an annoyance as it is a boon. Rising Song's family have been martial elites for generations, a tradition in which she follows with pride and displays with her intimidating mastery of the foreign Crimson Pentacle Blade Style. However, having grown up in such a military family, she was also raised far from the affairs of court, and her lack of understanding for court etiquette frequently shows.

[ ] One Black Heavenly Witness: There are really no words to describe the relationship between you and Heavenly Witness. Stemming from a line of court astrologers, she covers herself in strange bangles and rattling oracle bones, her bald head frequently painted with strange astrological signs. To put it lightly, Heavenly Witness is strange, and it is never really quite possible for you to explain why you stick together, but she has a talent for always turning out correct in the end. She is also, to put it mildly, simultaneously infuriatingly smug to be around and seems to be almost compulsively followed by odd omens. Despite this, she seems to consider you worthy of her own kind of strange loyalty and you affectionately refer to her as your very own royal seer, something which she tries to pretend doesn't flatter her.

You have maintained many such friends, some of them from childhood though no friendships as deep as this one. Despite your age and position, it was always difficult for you to maintain many friendships. Rulers of the Shogunate are only rarely supposed to even be seen in public, let alone be seen there; your mother's face and voice are rarely observed outside the palace but on coins and in the weekly Shogunal Address. When you travel around the city, as in the moment, it is in a luxurious carriage, its silken insides scented with incense and pleasant herbs to prevent the smells of the outside from seeping in. And what a city to travel in. Keinginan-i-Gehan, the World's Desire, is one of the most prestigious cities in perhaps the entire West and her nicknames are numerous and ostentatious enough that she could wear them as a necklace 'round her neck. Or so say the court poets anyways.

From within the curtains of your carriage, you gaze at the world outside and muse upon the city that will one day be yours. The inside of the carriage is covered in red silks, soft pillows stuffed with reeds and feathers, the scent of camphor and lavender pleasant to your smell. People pass by outside, clothed in blues and purples, reds and yellows; in tunics, in kemben, sarongs and kebayas. Some of them stop by and stare at the carriage, children pointing and loudly wondering at whom it might contain. More likely, most of them stare at the armed guard of soldiers that trail the carriage; a powerful person must be inside! You smile and let your gaze turn to the streets and buildings. At this sight, there is a somewhat melancholy edge to your smile; though the houses and shops are splendorous as befits the Queen of Cities, it is a forced splendour. There there is a cracked facade, here you pass a market square four times as large as the amount of space its current inhabitants use and over there, an older building has been partially cannibalized for bricks and materials.

You pull your face back from the curtains and muse on the history of your city—your empire—and what has led to where you sit now. As all imperial heirs, of course, you were taught history by the finest teachers available. Some of them were from the city, most of them were from elsewhere; from bustling Saata, from the academies of Adorned With Wisdom as a Sapphire, even from the thrice-cursed Realm of the Scarlet Empress and the usurper-state of Yalpagesh. You shut out the faint noises of the city outside and breathe in the scent of olibanum and peppermint, walking down the streets of your memory. You imagine yourself listening to the very first Shogunal Address by legendary Shogun-Khadev Six Gold Surrounding Glory and you dream of yourself following him as he moved the Shogunate that once governed all Creation into the distant West.

You imagine yourself on horseback as you ride through a field of your empire's thousand glories; the conquest of the mainland, the settlement of cities as far as the Caul and the western Blessed Isle, the glory of Keinginan-i-Gehan and a court where they say more poets live than there are citizens in other cities. And you dream of all that went wrong; the tiresome conflicts with the Scarlet Empress, the revolt of the Tengese and the devastation wrought by the murderous migrations of the Zhaobaihu and the Seven Tigers. And you think of the collapse; of the Empress' ride through the holy streets of the Queen of Cities, of the burning House of All Earthly Wisdom, of the loss of provinces and the reduction of the Great Western Shogunate to nothing but a single city.

"Your divine Highness", your reverie is broken by the familiar voice of Calm Wave, your mistress of the robes.

"Apologies your divine Highness, but you seemed to be dozing off. I merely wanted to ensure you did not fall asleep."

In her star-embroidered dark blue blouse of silk and her green skirt, both worn in the baju kurung style, she looks the part of a true lady of the Shogunal court. Her bronzed skin is painted white like your own, and her hair is hidden underneath a tightly-wrapped red veil; brooches, necklaces and bracelets decorating her form. Calm Wave has been responsible for your clothes and jewelry for years, and it is with a sigh of mock annoyance that you throw your long black hair back with the aid of a single ivory-painted hand — both embellished with jewelry chosen by her. A very rude, no-good mistress of the robes all around!

You grumble at her and mutter something about having told her about not needing to call you by that style in private, to which she responds in usual fashion by maintaining her perfectly neutral expression.

"Of course, your divine Highness, I will make sure to remember that in the future."

She bows her head deferentially but cannot hide the glint of defiant mischief in her eyes, nor do you think she particularly tries. You wave her off and retreat to the safety of glaring at her. Something you are sure she takes enormous amounts of enjoyment from. The bastard.

"Your divine Highness, far be it for me to inquire into my sovereign's thoughts, but you seemed very lost in your thoughts… what were you thinking of?"

Despite the hint of banter, her voice sounds concerned and she even furrows her brow in a rare display of facial emotion. You look out on the street again, thinking back to your reverie:

Article:

[ ] "I thought of the old Shogunate, and its grandeur…": In the time before the Realm's calendar reckoning, the Shogunate dominated all Creation. Anathema were kept to the margins, rebellion was subdued and peace was maintained. Yes, it was conflict-ridden, but it was cabinet wars between lords and their small retinues, not bloody wars that ravaged provinces. And yes, it had to retreat to the West eventually, but was that not better than maintaining an unsustainable rule over all Creation? At the Shogunal court, all the classics had been written: The Secret History of the Shoguns, the Frontier History, the Water-Flame Records, the Book of Praises. And orthodoxy had been maintained! Law had ruled, not the law of despotism and strength but a law of justice and a law of pens. Was that not better? (This is a personality vote. Holiest Gift will be hopeful.)

[ ] "I dreamt of our greatest ruler, and her death...": In the 382nd year of the Realm's calendar reckoning, Shogun-Banu Eight Vermillion Grasping Creation ascended to the Dais of a fallen great Western Shogunate. Strapped for cash and having lost many vital provinces to the Realm as well as the Zhaobaihu and Tengese, it was a shadow of itself. Shogun-Banu Grasping Creation began a decade-long series of campaigns that would raise the Shogunate to its greatest extent and set the stage for its fall. Subduing the Zhaobaihu, seizing the Realm's stolen lands and sending treasure-ships to the Caul, her death seems almost like a joke in retrospect. On the northern bank of the River of Queens, she simply submitted to the exhaustion of her battles and wounds, fell off her horse and died. Despite this ignominious death, it is hard not to look up to her star and dream of following. (This is a personality vote. Holiest Gift will be ambitious.)

[ ] "I remembered our humiliation, and the thrice-cursed Realm…": In the 553rd year of the Realm's calendar reckoning, the Scarlet Empress rode into Keinginan-i-Gehan and subjected it to three days of sacking. No place was spared and even temples were pillaged to the last. And then they simply left, tore apart the Shogunate and took for themselves everything north of the mountains while the Shogunate broke apart on its own. Today, only a shadow of the once-glorious capital city is left. North of the mountains, the Realm rules with a fist of jade and south in what you once called the Shogunal Sea, there is naught but anarchy, piracy and a few remnant principalities who pretend to submit to imperial rule while making war on each other independently. (This is a personality vote. Holiest Gift will be melancholic.)

She nods, understanding, "One supposes that makes sense."

"With a history such as ours, and a position such as yours, it must be hard to not think of it." She says after a period of pregnant silence.

You remain silent, but your lack of answer merely affirms her supposition. You do often think of the history of your Shogunate. Finally, after a long period of neither saying anything, you open your mouth and ask, "What shall become of us, Wave? The Realm's Protectorate controls everything north of the mountains, we practically pay Yalpagesh to take away our own lands and subjects and I am still not…"

She interrupts you before you can mention your yet un-Exalted status.

"I beg you Gift, please don't make any mention of it — even should you ascend to the Dais without your blood awakened, our Shogun-State is not the despotism of the Realm; you would have a whole court and all its ministries to assist you! Please do not dwell on such matters."

You furrow your brow and cast your gaze downwards.

"It's just-" You begin, but she does not let you finish.

"You have passed all the exams and excelled in all your studies Gift. It may be that in the Realm, they demand the strength of the Exaltation to command their subjects out of fear for retribution, but please remember that your own mother's blood only lit aflame when she sat on the Dais in the first place and that here we have no need to inspire fright to command. You are the heir to the Shoguns and the celestial signs marked your birth — all of Keinginan-i-Gehan will obey your command one day! Was Surrounding Glory a great hero when the Shogun-State came into his hands, Gift?"

You remain silent, before muttering out a low, "I suppose you're right Wave, sorry for bothering you. It's just been on my mind lately."

She nods sympathetically, "I understand." She says after another period of silence.

She doesn't, but you both pretend she does.

"We should be at the palace soon." She says, perfunctorily, and you gaze out the curtains once more, trying to not think of either the past or future.

Alas, that leaves you with only the present.

---

Hiya and welcome to my Exalted quest!

Heaven thy Home and Earth thy Slave is my new quest set in Creation, the setting of the Exalted roleplaying game. You play as Eight Vermillion Holiest Gift, meaning Holiest Gift born on the eighth day, the currently only and hopefully not the last heir to the fallen Blue Monkey Shogunate.

Holiest Gift, while talented and skilled, is mortal and has mortal limits. She grows hungry, thirsty and tired, she fears death and has never been in a fight for her life before. While trained from birth in many skills, she is no genius, merely talented and she is certainly no larger-than-life figure raised above her peers by divine might. That might be subject to change later, but for now she has very real and very human limits, just like you or me.

Unlike many other Exalted quests, Holiest Gift is not entirely undefined. She has undergone most of her education in the Shogunal palace of the Great Western Shogunate and already has her skills well in place. She is still young, however, and has much room for growth yet.

 

[Chehrazad]

Arc 1: Holiest Gift

• Update I: Jewel of the West
• Update II: The Tongue of Men is the Whip of God
• Update III: Fate Abides as Fate Must
• Update IV: A Bright Star for the City of Cities, pt. 1
• Update V: A Bright Star for the City of Cities, pt. 2.
• Update VI: The Red Apple
• Update VII: A Sunrise Cast in Red, Part 1

 

[Chehrazad]

Name: Eight Vermilion Holiest Gift
Exaltation: None.
Wounds: None.
Titles:

• Imperial Heir to the Great Terrestrial Shogunate

Style Summary

Prince of Falcons Style
Empire-of-Words Style​

Intimacies: Principles & Ties

Defining Principle: One day, by our hands, the age of glory may return.
Major Principle: Duty is more important than joy​

Major Principle: Struggle Against Fate​

Major Tie: Three Red Rising Song (Dear Friend)
Major Tie: Twelve White Calm Wave (Close Trust)​

Major Tie: Yalpagesh (Furious Defiance)​

Minor Tie: Cathak Zamati (Appreciation Tempered With Fear)
Minor Tie: The Realm (Curiosity From Afar)
Minor Tie: Ruling-Exalted-like-a-Sovereign (Fearful Infatuation)​

Styles

Subordinates and Allies

Three Red Rising Song Twelve White Calm Wave

• From a famous family of martial artists and soldiers that was given land by the Shogunate in an attempt to restore military capability after the Empress broke the Shogunate in RY 553, Rising Song is one of your closest friends and effectively your bodyguard.
  
  A dark-skinned girl with golden hair, Rising Song is a close - if argumentative - friend who would give her life for you, and you are not even sure if she expects the same from you. While only a young woman like yourself, she is nonetheless a highly skilled martial artist, and while you are sure there are better ones, you have faith she would make it a competition. She is also a killed rider and a practiced tracker and hunter. Unlike you, has definitely killed someone before.
• Technically from a merchant family, Calm Wave's family was raised to aristocracy by reigning Shogun Gentle Palm early into her reign some sixty years ago. One of your closest friends and your mistress of the robes.
  
  A bronze-skinned woman who looks significantly older and more responsible than she is, Calm Wave is actually your junior. Calm Wave is an extremely close friend, with whom you often share your knowledge and learn from in turn. Younger than you by a year, she nonetheless projects an aura of calm maturity that lets her move in circles far beyond her means. Highly skilled in affairs of court, picking up knowledge she shouldn't have, the beautician's arts and smooth-talking.

---

What You Know

The Great Western Shogunate The Immaculacy The Sublime State of Yalpagesh The Scarlet Realm The Protectorate to Pacify the West Saata

• The successor state to the Great Terrestrial Shogunate founded the overthrow of the Anathematic demon-kings that once ruled Creation, the Great Western Shogunate still formally refers to itself as the Great Terrestrial Shogunate. Foreigners call it the Blue Monkey Shogunate on account of the grinning blue monkey design on its banner it has used the last six hundred or so years. Formally "founded" when Shogun-Khadev Six Gold Surrounding Glory moved the capital to the West and founded the current capital Keinginan-i-Gehan after the complete collapse of Shogunal authority in the East. Today, the Blue Monkey Shogunate is only its capital and a few surrounding territories, but in its heyday it dominated most of the Southwest and still serves as the prototype for the majority of courts and legal systems in the region. Even imperial satraps are forced to contend with the traditions created and sponsored by the Great Western Shogunate.
  
  Unlike the Realm, the Shogunate practices succession by acclamation rather than dynasty. There is no formal system of succession, instead rulers are selected by gaining the favour and acclamation of important notables so that they can simply sit on the throne without opposition. Typically Shoguns are acclaimed multiple times before they ascend to the throne and after they have taken it to ensure that the notables still support them.
• Immaculacy is a general term for an orthopractic, non-theistic religion subscribed to by millions of people across Creation. The core tenets of Immaculacy is the belief in the Five Immaculate Dragons who showed mankind the path to enlightenment and led the battle against the Anathema demon-kings, an ordered cosmos organized as a battle between purity and impurity and the existence of a Perfected Hierarchy of all living and non-living things. In the Perfected Hierarchy all things have their places, and even mighty gods must subordinate themselves to their place in the Perfected Hierarchy. Where people act outside their station and break with the Perfected Hierarchy, impurity and disharmony reign. Impurity, in turn, is brought in check through the emulation of the Five Immaculate Dragons, the purification of the body and mind through meditation and Immaculate rituals and the resumption of adherence to the Perfected Hierarchy.
  
  In the West, the largest branch is by far the Immaculate Orthodoxy, the old state religion of the Great Western Shogunate and claimant to being the original and untainted form of Immaculacy. To the tenets listed above, the Immaculate Orthodoxy adds a veneration of the Shogun as the incarnate Immaculate Dragon of Earth, Pasiap Who Illuminates Both Worlds With Majesty and Power and is claimed to have entered occultation before he finally incarnated in the Shoguns to guide the age towards salvation. In addition, the Immaculate Orthodoxy also believes in the divine Elders; that certain highly virtuous monks and Immaculates can sometimes reach such an enlightenment that it sets in their bones and their tombs become sites of pilgrimage and veneration, something that the Realm often uses as pretext to accuse them of religious innovation to worship the Dragon-Blooded.
  
  The Realm's branch of Immaculacy is the Immaculate Philosophy, a more austere branch that believes in the bodhisattvahood of the Scarlet Empress and is centrally managed by the Palace Sublime on the Blessed Isle. Unlike in the Immaculate Orthodoxy where there is no real hierarchy beyond a scholarly one and monks can just as often engage in politics, the Immaculate Philosophy believes in firm submission of Immaculacy to the state and that monks must be non-political figures with the exception of the belief in the successively reincarnated Mouth of Peace, a sort of sin-eating figure who is permitted to sully herself with politics for the good of the Philosophy as a whole.
• Founded as the Sublime House of Semerw approximately a hundred years ago, the state of Yalpagesh consists in theory of all who have sworn fealty to the Semerwi House, but in practice it is a bureaucratic state in its own right. Some three hundred years ago, the Shogunate invited the migration of the Khivtu peoples into all the lands of the Grand Hook peninsula west of the Karvand river to make up for falling revenues and to make something out of increasingly marginal lands by converting them to pasture. While it saw an immediate success, it also rendered the lands primed to break from the Shogunate as they did when the Empress sacked Keinginan-i-Gehan just a hundred years later. Founded by the frontier-lord and mercenary Semerw, the Yalpageshig state now dominates all the lands west of the Karvand river and many east of it, encroaches upon the Great Western Shogunate with every year that passes since it conquered the last remaining provinces blocking it from Keinginan-i-Gehan just ten years ago. Unique among all the various states of the Southwest, the Semerwi House openly professes the Immaculate Philosophy as their state religion without being a satrapy of the Realm. The culture of the Sublime State is a hybridistic mix of the Realm, the Shogunate and their own tribal customs.
  
  Succession in Yalpagesh has since its founding consisted of the Mirza of Yalpagesh assigning his sons governorships where they can practice their ruling until he dies and gather supporters. When he dies, the sons compete to be the first to reach the capital and can freely fight and kill one another with the aid of their supporters. The first to reach the capital and proclaim himself Mirza gains the loyalty of the state and army and can do with the remainder as he wills. Typically a successful son forms a "cabinet" with one or two other sons and has the rest killed. Daughters are never given governorships and are instead sent to the army and bureaucracy. Since the state and army are expected to stay independent of the succession conflict, daughters are inviolate.
• Formally the Protected Domains of the Realm of the Scarlet Empress, the Realm is the greatest empire in the world. Founded by a former Shogunal soldier who seized an Anathematic weapon of apocalyptic power, the Realm is currently the world-hegemon, ruling from the east to west and from the north to south, with its many satrapies and its ten Great Houses who govern it. Forming the very model of imperial absolutism, it is a common misconception in the Southwest that inhabitants of the Realm consider the Scarlet Empress a living goddess. The Realm is currently paralyzed, and the Scarlet Empress has disappeared. Instead, the Realm is ruled jointly by the Imperial Regent Tepet Fokuf and the executive Council of the Empty Throne and stuck in bureaucratic and legislative gridlock. The legions that were formally stationed all over the world are currently in the process of being recalled to the Blessed Isle proper, and many of them have been carved up in favour of the private dynastic House Legions.
  
  The Realm has never experienced a succession, and thus does not have a system for succession.
• Colloquially referred to as the Protectorate or the Viceroyalty, the Protectorate is a special imperial satrapy created when the Realm took the lands north of the mountain range that protected Keinginan-i-Gehan. With its enormous size and population, the Protectorate has enough soldiers and riches of its own that it could not be permitted to fall into the hands of a single Great House, but also could not effectively be split up. On account of this, it is ruled by a Satrapal Deliberative containing representatives from many different imperial Houses. Its current elected satrap is Cathak Zamati, who is attempting a centralizing policy to consolidate her own power in the absence of the Scarlet Empress.
  
  The Protectorate is ruled by a mixed royal-presidential system, in which a Satrap Protector is elected by the Satrapal Deliberative and given a number of powers and restrictions by signing a Viceregal Manifest that outlines what they can and cannot do- in effect a kind of constitution for their reign. Satrap Protectors reign for life or until deposed by an imperial decree.
• Situated far to the West, Saata is an extremely wealthy and extremely racuous city-state ruled by the Sinasana Dynasty, a client House of the Realm. While Saata was once part of the Great Western Shogunate, it was always only loosely ruled, and the Realm's authority over the Sinasanas is no different. Just as unfathomably rich as it is unfathomably corrupt, Saata has a well-deserved reputation for corruption, piracy and vice.

 

[Chehrazad]

The Tongue of Men is the Whip of God

Spoiler: Winning Votes

[X] "I thought of the old Shogunate, and its grandeur..."
[X] Three Red Rising Song

In the treasury of Pasiap's Abode District,
On the orders of Five Green Great Hill, Foreman,
Two Blue Tall Grass made this firewand.
On the authority of Seven Cerulean Far Vision, Treasurer, and Nine Saffron Swift Thought, Secretary of the Treasury,
Series firewand of the Eighteenth Cycle, Twenty-Third Indiction, Bronze Era of the 11th Epoch of the Great Shogunate.
294,140 grains of firedust supplied by Six Gold Raging Onager, merchant, were taken to the storehouse for Five Green Great Hill, Foreman, Nineteenth Cycle, Twenty-Third Indiction, Bronze Era of the 11th Epoch of the Great Shogunate
1513 firewands supplied by Five Green Great Hill, Foreman, were taken to the court of Seizing-Prey-as-a-Falcon, Agha of Yalpagesh, Twentieth Cycle, Twenty-Third Indiction, Bronze Era of the 11th Epoch of the Great Shogunate.

-Administrative Records of the Great Western Shogunate, Shogunal Divan​

It might perhaps be inaccurate to speak of viewing the palace of the Great Western Shogunate, because in reality the one before you is merely one among many. Rising from the enormous Image-of-Creation Square, a host of blind arches in the palatial facade each play home to frescoes and art, the smooth and reflective turquoise stone of the heaven-humbling dome shining in the sunlight, seeming more like the icing of some monstrous cake than quarry-hewn marble. The pre-eminent palace of the Western Shoguns is truly a sight to behold, even in its modern somewhat sorry state. Here and there, a fresco is missing. Here and there, the gold filling of a carved inscription has not yet been refilled. Though only a few soldiers of the Realm ever made it in here and the defence of the palace was the most ardent in all the city, parts of the palace were sold off following the sack or even more disgracefully by defector princes and lords who stole from the palace to grant themselves a stipend. It is in this palace that you have grown up, and even from the outside, your gaze catches on different wings; the chancellery, the reception, the banquet hall.

You step out of the carriage, saying goodbye to your vision of the square as imperial attendants erect a tunnel of silk between the carriage and the palace gates to respectfully shield your dignity from visibility. You roll your eyes - it's not that you dislike the practice, but so close to the palace it always seemed somewhat pointless - and make your way through the gates opened before you, Wave following behind you. You need to switch into something more appropriate for the court session later, so you signal for Wave to follow and hurry towards the private sections of the palace. You pretend to not look improper as you hurry through the luxurious inner corridors, well aware of both the court to be held in a few hours and the time and difficulty it can take to find a proper outfit

Usually referred to as the Painted Rooms, for the ornate artistry that covers the walls, the private sections of the palace are secluded in the eastern wing of the palace. Meant for changing clothes, as well as the more private matters of courtiers that have to take place beyond the prying eyes of others, it is a well-known and accepted truth that the Painted Rooms are also most likely the one place in the palace most spied on. This is usually considered acceptable on account of the fact that the spies work for the Dais and not for other courtiers; no place in the very heart of the Shogunate goes unsurveyed, but some eyes are more preferable than others. They should be just a few minutes from here, but you are rushing and thinking of other things, so you suddenly find yourself unsure of where exactly you are. Of course you have attended court a thousand times before, but this time is different-

"Forgive me, your divine Highness, but you seem agitated as of late. As your closest attendant - and your friend - I need to ask what is on your mind." Wave's voice cuts through the corridor despite being barely above a whisper.

You look around, where were the Painted Rooms again? You absent-mindedly answer Wave's question without much thought to what comes out of your mind, "It's because of that prince." You freeze up as soon as you realize what you've said. Friends, is it illegal to reveal a state secret by accident if you're the only heir?

You don't get an opportunity to ponder the question further. You think the Painted Rooms are actually on the next floor and you start making your way up the stairs, being hounded by Wave all the way. "What prince, pray tell?" She asks, clearly forgetting the address form from the shock.

"Not here, Wave!" You protest, trying to shout and speak barely louder than a whisper at once, then swearing in a most un-Shogun-like way when you stub your toe on one of the final stairs before the next floor. You continue to whisper conspiratorially with Wave as you turn down the corridor to the Painted Rooms, pretending your foot doesn't hurt.

Oh yes, this is the Painted Rooms. You feel proud of yourself for your successful identification of the enormous painted drama of Eight Vermillion Grasping Creation and her court on an imperial hunt. The insight expected of the Shogun-Banu-to-be.

"I understand that Gift - I mean your divine Highness - but a prince from Yalpagesh is here? What's he like? Why is he here? Why was the court not informed?" Wave seems to be trying to drown you in questions, even as you enter the secret Shogunal compartments of the Painted Rooms.

"I don't know Wave, that's what I've been telling you." You hiss back.

"I have no idea, I just know a Yalpageshig prince will be here and has sought an audience with the Shogun-Banu, nothing else. Now help me find an outfit, please, or I might just commit suicide and make sure my blood splatters on you so the Shogunal Companions will think the mistress of the robes has murdered the Shogunal Heir to impersonate her like in The Secret History of the Shoguns."

That gets her to laugh, though it's more like one of those characteristic Calm Wave snorts that you get when you have said something truly ridiculous, or more commonly when she feels like being a contrarian and disagreeing with your suggestions for no good reason at all except to inform you that she thinks you are stupid. Once again, a very rude, no-good mistress of the robes all around!

The stark reminder that you are currently in the private part of the Painted Rooms and looking for an outfit that will be needed in a few hours seems to get her mind briefly off its current track. At least you hope so.

"You're right, your divine Highness. Of course, forgive me." She starts sizing you up and down with her eyes, as she has done a hundred, thousand times before and taking your measure in your mind.

"In The Ornament of All the World, Twelve White Swaying Dance has her protagonist pick out a unique costume for each of her courtiers to symbolize where they came from and how much they enrich her court. Maybe you should try something similar?" She suggests.

You think about it for a while, holding back the bratty impulse to ask her if she's suggesting you should show up with all your friends in quirky clothes for each. Not only would she probably 'forget' you are her superior and slap you, it would also be a very rude misunderstanding of The Ornament- a crime that you believe should be punished with death or exile.

You consider her suggestion and find yourself quite liking the idea of styling your outfit off:

Article:

[ ] Your Embassy in Saata - Only three years ago, you were part of an embassy to the citystate of Saata. While nominally an imperial satrapy, the Sinasana dynasty of Saata have no problems hosting their own embassies and banquets, and though you found the nobility of Saata itself boorish at best the city was something else. With its enormous riches and open displays of vice, the city was a sight to behold and you found yourself touring its painted streets with eager curiosity. A Saatan costume will admittedly be somewhat scandalous in the court, but you fondly remember your time in House Sinasana's abode. You are fondly remembered there as well. With your foreign etiquette and manners - combined with no small amount of generous donations - you the talk of the town and your donations helped revitalize the orthodox Immaculate temple of Saata and founded a shelter for homeless and prostitutes that your ledgers inform you is still in use. (This is a personality vote. Holiest Gift will like scandalous fashion and dislike restrictions on her behaviour)

[ ] Your Education in Yalpagesh - To aid in the cause of peace, it has never been uncommon for Yalpagesh and the Shogunate to swap "hostages", that are brought up in the other's court. You are the adopted daughter of the Mirzas of the Semerwi dynasty of Yalpagesh and grew up surrounded by the culture and knowledge of that country for a significant part of your life. Even if it is somewhat distant to you know, you still remember those years with a mixture of fondness and confusion, unsure of how exactly you will plan to deal with a country that occupies such a treasured place in your heart as supreme ruler of its primary enemy. More pertinently, you remember absolutely falling in love with the fashion of Yalpagesh. Wearing a court version of the signature frontier kaftan of brocade that the Aghas of Yalpagesh so adore will certainly be one way to make your entrance, but it will also make an impression on the prince and hopefully on Yalpagesh that you have not forgotten your upbringing. (This is a personality vote. Holiest Gift will like Yalpagesh and dislike conflict)

[ ] Your Captivity in the Protectorate - Five years ago, you were taken from Keinginan-i-Gehan and sent to the capital of the so-called Protectorate to Pacify the West- the enormous satrapy north of the mountains maintained by the Realm. Effectively a glorified captive, you nonetheless mingled with the dynasts of the Realm, as well as the local nobles. The hybrid of imperial culture and its mark on local customs was fascinating, and so was the time you spent touring the countryside. While you have no particular desire to return to those lands, the Grand Satrap Cathak Zamati did take a shine to you and complimented you many times that you would have made a fine dynast, something you are still not quite sure how to take. Regardless of your personal feelings on its culture and history, wearing native with a Realm-inspired twist is quite fashionate these days among courtiers, so it is simply a small step to take it a bit further with Realm-inspired clothes with a native twist. (This is a personality vote. Holiest Gift will be interested in the Realm and like Cathak Zamati)

With your choice made and outfit on, Calm Wave gives you a final, critical eye. After clothing you, she is always unsure, and it is clear that this time is no different.

"You did great work as always, Wave." You assure her soothingly, attempting to get her mind off the doubts.

She simply harrumphs and continues to eye up her handiwork.

"I suppose it is fine, your divine Highness." She finally concedes and you can feel your tense muscles relax.

"You should attend to yourself too Wave, you look tired. If you go to court like that, they might confuse you for a merchant." You laugh, but stop when you notice that Wave is silent.

"Is there anything wrong, Wave?" You ask, your voice full of concern as you step closer to her.

"It's just- I can't get that prince out of my head, Gift. Usually they send emissaries, don't they? So what is a prince doing at the heart of the Shogunate? In the Unfolding of Ten Thousand Scrolls, the Semurvi prince who shows up at Ten Lilac Sublime Butterfly's court does so to declare war on him. Do- do you think this will be the same?" Wave steps closer to you as well, closer than any rules of procedure and protocol permits.

So close, you can see all the worry and fear in her eyes, the imperceptible creases in her normally disciplined expression, the shaking of her gentle voice. You have never seen her so afraid before.

"Wave, I-" you begin, before the same part of your brain that once told you to go on a hunt without any courtiers or announcements so the entire court worried over your death for a day stops you. Your body makes the decision for you and you embrace her and bring her as close to you as possible, something both of you are clearly unsure of how to deal with.

You stand in silence like this for what seems like ages, quietly praying that the Shogun-Banu-to-be and her mistress of the robes could be dissolved and leave Wave and Gift alone, until she embraces you in turn.

"I'm sure there won't be war, Wave. The Unfolding was written more than a hundred years ago, and is so overdramatized anyways. Even if there was war, even the Semurvis know that they cannot get past our walls. That lies past even the army of the Yalpageshig. The Empress only managed to do so by betrayal."

You can feel her steadily relax in your arms, though the tension never really goes away.

"I- I understand so Gift, but I can't banish the fear from my mind. I'm just so afraid. What if it becomes war and the Yalpageshig pierce the walls or starve us for years? What if- what if you die?" The room is silent except for you too and you can feel her words impale your heart like an artfully wielded dagger.

"I understand, Wave." You hold your friend tighter and don't say anything else, and eventually she leans into the embrace as well.

"I will do what I can." You find yourself repeating meaninglessly, though you're not sure whether you are speaking to yourself or to Wave or what you could even do.

After several minutes of silent embrace, she breaks off the embrace.

"You need to attend court, your divine Highness. Do not bother yourself more with me, I will meditate on the will of the divine Elders through self-annihilation, and I will find peace."

You nod in repsonse.

"As thou wilt, as is within mine power, thou lady of pearl and feather." You quote the Unfolding, and your reference to Shogun-Khadev Eleven White Uttermost Edge's response to the Caulborn emissary's request for protection against imperial depredation and piracy is not lost on her.

She smiles weakly and tries to look confident.

"To the feet of mine lord, thou governor of the rising-sun-land, two-times seven times I fall down. To the throne of mine Shogun, barbarian-dispelling lord of hosts, thou holy one, two-times seven times I fall down." She quotes the Unfolding in return, and turns away.

"I must prepare for the court as well. Can't have them thinking I'm a merchant, now, can we?" She attempts to joke, though her shaky voice tells of her insecurity. You part from each other as she goes further into the Painted Rooms and you go the way of the audience hall.

"Your divine Highness", the pair of guards outside greet you in their ceremonial armour and bow deeply for you as you step through the open portal.

"In the name of the divine Elders, the holy Immaculate Dragons and their incarnated heavenly Shogun-Banu; the most gracious, the most merciful." You announce your presence and make a second-rank bow, bending halfway forward, until Mother's voice calls you to rise from your bow.

You cast your gaze about the audience hall and take in the painted walls, the decorative pillars of marble, the Radiant Peacock Dais itself with its many colours. Serene in her sovereignty, your mother Six Gold Gentle Palm reclines in the divan of the Dais, raised above the earth by a staired platform covered in an enormous, richly patterned rug. There is no place in the room in which one cannot but stare at the Dais itself, framed by a solar outline of orichalc-gold and carmine jade, each of its shining solar rays leading the eye to the Shogun seated beneath its golden roof. There, chimes and bells of sacred bones, devil-gold and all the colours of holy jade dangle in harmony around Gentle Palm's seated body.

Seated in the seat of splendour, her Most High Divine Majesty the Shogun Six Gold Gentle Palm reclines within the Dais, letting herself be fanned by a pair of servants on either side. With her stern face framed by the halo of her golden radiate crown and elaborate earrings, Mother is like cast out of one of the paintings on the wall; a stark contrast to the tall and lanky form of yourself. A pair of jade armbands cover her muscular armbands, and her chest is covered by a luxurious silken sarong in imperial yellow, its edges trimmed with sapphire blue, gold and jewels of all sorts. You make sure to stand to her right as the heir apparent is supposed to, while the Voice of the Shogunate stands to her left. As the attendants and courtiers trickle in from the sides, you see several familiar faces among them; your dear friend Rising Song winks at you and you give Wave an encouraging and hopefully non-obvious nod. Soon there will not be time for any more nods or encouragement.

The Voice - a gaunt man who must be in his fifties and fits his kaftan badly - looks back to the Shogun as the bells of court ring to signal the opening of the court. An orchestral symphony of sound erupts as the Shogunal trumpeters and musicians sound the Hymnal Prayer to the Continuation of our Divine Terrestrial Shogunate and Mother signs her message at the Voice: [US] [SERVANT] [INTRODUCE]. He makes a third-rank bow to her, keeping his eyes on her hand until he sees the [UP] [RISE] signs from her. As the sound of trumpets and singing dancers slowly dies down, he rises from the bow and turns to the assembled courtiers, raising his voice as a new team of tambourines and other musicians supply the next part of the introductory court ceremony:

"As the Song doth rise in the East and our Shogunate doth meet it in the West, so doth our Great Shogun see fit to show her radiant face to we, her Most High Divine Majesty's eternally loyal subjects, once more. As the Sun doth with the Moon's companionship accompany her trailing across the heavens, so do our Shogunal Sun and her divine Highness, the Shogun-Frazend, unveil to us their heavenly grace and bid the courtiers and subjects of the divine Great Terrestrial Shogunate proclaim their allegiance now and forever to the rule of the laws and customs of the world-governing Shogunate."

As he finishes the lengthy introduction, it is as if a wave passes through the court, and its many courtiers fall in one great and sinuous motion to the floor, performing the bows appropriate to their rank to show obedience to you and Mother- though you know it is really just Mother for now. While you were acclaimed in your mother's womb, you have not yet been given the formal acclamation during your life, nor the one you would receive upon your ascent to the Dais.

Mother signs to the Voice again; [US] [PETITION] [PLURAL] [RECEIVE].

The Voice turns to the Court and raises his voice to proclaim the opening of petitions, and you do your best you can to pretend you don't hate standing straight up for an hour looking regal as your mother listens to the petitions of merchants, notables and other residents of the Shogunate. The rest of the court mingles and engages in talk with each other, only stopping in their doings now and then when the bells ring, your Mother's Voice proclaiming some new verdict and the resumption of affairs. The court can mingle, of course, but not the heir; her job is to stand regal and look like she has a job to do. Something which you most certainly do not, except for the few times the Voice asks your opinions on Mother's behalf and you opine them back to him with a whisper in his ear. Unlike Mother, you are permitted to use your voice at court, just not too much.

When you don't opine on court cases, judgements and petitions, you try to find Wave or Rising Song with your eyes. Typically you don't succeed in the former case; Rising Song is very easy to spot despite her short height, however, if only because of her love for foreign styles. You spend the time in boredom, casting your gaze over the great Shoguns portrayed on the artful walls and imagining yourself in their shoes, riding up the River of Queens to campaign against the Tengese or crossing the mountains with a hundred thousand men and twenty thousand horses to meet the Realm at the open fields of Janneh-Valhat like in the Book of Lessons.

You smile.

Those stories always appealed to you; when the Shoguns were powerful and the Empress feared the Shogunate. Now you are just prisoners. Confined to this cage of a city while the Realm doesn't even see fit pick at your corpse. Your smile fades. Fades just in time for you to be shaken out of your revelry by the next announcement.

"Speak thou now, thou prince of Yalpagesh, thou scion of the blood of Semerw!" You look at the prostrating figure before you, your heart catching in your throat as they pass over his clearly Yalpagesh-style kaftan, his long hair underneath his draped turban.

With his face still pressed against the floor - an unusual degree of submission for a prince of Yalpagesh, now that you think of it - you cannot see his face as he speaks.

"To the feet of mine lady, thou governor of the setting-sun-land, two-times seven times I fall down. To the throne of mine Shogun, barbarian-dispelling lady of hosts, thou holy one, two-times seven times I fall down!" He proclaims, and you are reminded of how it somehow still shocks you that Yalpageshig princes are often more fluent in your language than they are their own. His paraphrasing of the Unfolding, seems to shock the other members of the court, but this part is less surprising to you; Yalpageshig adore the classics almost as much as you do.

Your mother signs and the Voice speaks.

"For what purpose dost thou fall before the Throne of the Universe, thou Yalpageshig prince?" Something is off about the way he says it, you think. It doesn't feel right, nor does the swift reply of the prince.

"To submit myself before the world-governing Shogun, thou Voice of the Universal Shogunate, thou holy ones! To beg for the blessing of the Great Shogunate unto this insignificant servant, thou Terrestrial Shogun of the world."

You still can't quite put your finger on it, but there's something about this whole thing that feels fundamentally wrong. It is like you are a character in a play who has realized an actor is playing her and she is merely a mask. You find Wave's eyes in the crowd, and she looks into yours with a look like she means to shake you, to beg an explanation of you. You can feel your fingers fidgeting and a drop of sweat accumulating on your brow.

The Voice speaks without Mother's sign, yet she does not seem to even note it. She merely gazes down on the prostate prince before her.

"Thou Shahrab-Daimyo of the Great Shogunate what blessing from the Shogun, Who Illuminates Both Worlds With Majesty and Power, what blessing dost thou request of Her Most High Divine Majesty?" Suddenly you realize what's wrong. You are about to turn your face to Mother, but then the prince speaks up again. Oh no. Oh no no no.

"Thou Most High Divine Majesty, thou who art Pasiap Who Illuminates Both Worlds With Majesty and Power incarnated, who governs the world, possessing the Creation-Ruling Mandate, thou supreme sovereign, Shogun who dispenses crowns and seizes thrones!" He begins, and you realize that you have heard this beginning a hundred times before, your stomach sinking.

"I am wide-famed as an Agha and by name I am called Seizing-Prey-as-a-Falcon. When I was dwelling in my country and my father the Mirza of the line of Semerw - may the Dragons light up her tomb! - died in his peaceful slumber, I was according to the customs of my nation to make way for the capital from my seat in the province of Elmeren. With my seat situated at twenty three frasukhs from the royal seat, I made way thus to claim the throne in the fashion of the Yalpageshig. But I had been deceived, for through trickery my elder brother had kept the messengers from reaching my seat, and when I arrived, my beloved father had been dead for a week and my treacherous brother who had taken the throne thus through deceit declared me to be killed. There were those among the people who did not listen to lies, for the Dragons made them see the truth, and they hid me amongst them and I made for thine generous Shogunate. I prostate myself now before thee, thou crown-dispensing Shogun and I beg before thine feet that thou seatest me upon the throne of Yalpagesh as the rightful Shahrab-Daimyo, and I shall return to the Shogunal lands all the provinces west of the Karvand river."

Rising Sun catches your gaze and you share a single moment; her expression of sheer confusion meeting your horrified realization. This whole thing was an act, a play to deceive those unable to see Mother's lack of hand movements and realize that the whole exchange was planned beforehand. Those unable to realize that the allusions to the classics and the introductory speech of submission were more than merely a particularly educated barbarian showing off his interest in your enlightened culture. His ritual submission was lifted directly from the Unfolding- a revival of the traditional exchange of vassalage and overlordship between Shogun and Daimyo.

The Voice speaks again, and the words cut in your ears like knives.

"Her Most High Divine Highness, the crown-dispensing and throne-seizing Shogun speaketh to her faithful Shahrab-Daimyo: Thou art by the law and customs of the nation of Yalpagesh its Shahrab, and by the law and decree of the bakufu of Her Most Divine Highness, Six Gold Gentle Palm Who Illuminates Both Worlds With Majesty and Power, her Shogun. On account of Her generosity and infinite love for her eternally loyal subjects She hath seen fit to grant to thee a detachment of Shogunal troops numbering one thousand and five hundred." You feel like vomiting, like crying, like screaming, like bleeding.

Do they not realize that this is tantamount to a declaration of war against Yalpagesh? Do they not realize that they only have one chance? Do they not realize that this could mean the end of the Shogunate?

A cynical voice speaks inside you: And this ennui is not? You do not answer it.

The rest of the court proceeds like a faint voice at the edge of your hearing, a shadow in the edge of your vision. Your eyes cannot focus. Your voice cannot speak. The mumbling and bumbling of the court is audible to you, but it is more like the buzzing of a mosquito than the speech of humans. You have lost track of time when the court audience ends, and your body feels more like a puppet on strings, dancing to the fingers of your mind as you go through the formal rituals, blessing the court and thanking the Dragons for the perpetuation of the Great Terrestrial Shogunate. You are not sure if you are really there.

You need something else. You need someone else.

Luckily it does not take long before both Wave and Song find you, just in time to drown you in a deluge of questions. Are we going to war? What is the Shogun thinking? Do you know the prince? What are you going to do? Are you following the army? You feel nauseous, like you are about to throw up. Every time you open up your mouth, you swallow in another mouthful of questions like drowning in murky waters. Stop, stop. Help, help. Can't you see I'm drowning? The world starts to spin, your head is hurting. Won't someone just help me?

"Alright. This won't do." Rising Song's voice cuts through the air like the seas being parted.

"It is clear that we need to do something else, or I'm going to get sick." She declares before following.

"And then Gift might get even more sick." She casually refers to you by your informality-name in public, seemingly not caring about the mortified stares of nearby courtiers leaving.

"It is clear that we need to do something, and what we need is a good, wholesome game of chowgan. No one has ever been sick after a game of chowgan."

"That is not happening." Wave's voice is authoritative and powerful.

"Her divine Highness needs a calm and peaceful session of calligraphy. The classics focus the mind and the pen-strokes focus the soul. No one has been sick after chowgan because the sick people tend to get knocked unconscious off their horses." She emphasizes that last part, and after a minute of argument, neither of them seem to be particularly interested in asking you what you want. You decide to break it up and say that you would rather prefer:

Article:

[ ] A Game of Chowgan - Chowgan is the traditional game for nobility in the Shogunate. It originally stems from the Southwest, but it was one of many traditions that the Shogunate carried with itself when it was moved to the West. Competing to strike a small rubber ball with long sticks - usually fitted with a mallet or similar - two or more teams play mounted, attempting to defeat the other by moving the ball into a goal on the opposing side. Chowgan is typically played by nobility in the Image-of-Creation Square right outside the palace and considered an important game to maintain equestrian skills. (This is a personality and style vote. Holiest Gift will like riding and gain the Equestrian Empress style)

[ ] A Session of Calligraphy - Calligraphy is one of the most traditional pastimes of refined nobility and scholars. It was once practiced all over the Shogunal world, but now the only true centres of calligraphy is Keinginan-i-Gehan and - you are ashamed to admit this - the Imperial City of the Realm. Only here do cultured people still truly understand the strokes, the styles, the methods. Typically practiced in specialized calligraphy halls, of which there are several in the palace, it is enjoyed along with chai and frequently involves many so-called "calligrapher's games", in which participants attempt to finish a character based on what another has written or guess what a character will say before it is written. (This is a personality and style vote. Holiest Gift will like high culture and gain the Empire-of-Words Style)

 

[Chehrazad]

Fate Abides as Fate Must

Spoiler: Winning Votes

[X] A Session of Calligraphy
[X] Your Captivity in the Protectorate

Piercing Fire was here. The women of Fivecanton will weep for her. She brings land into the empire [characters used are homonymous with "makes land real"] with the world-conquering Shogun now.

-Graffiti found in the ruins of Fivecanton by the River of Queens, dated RY 389​

So antisocial in every way is dynastic empire, so full of mistrust and ill-will, that the greatest and mightiest of the Blue Monkey Shoguns celebrated the fact that she was not afraid of her own daughter's acclamation.

-From the commentaries of Cathak Admaha on the Secret History of the Shoguns​

Calligraphy, the beautiful queen of the high arts. That is what they call it anyways. You always enjoyed the calming feeling of the reed pen between your fingers, the muted scratching of the tip of the pen meeting the ceremonial palm leaf paper and the shine of light reflecting off still-wet ink forming characters and signs. In the memory of the old calligraphic masters, you take solace as your troubled thoughts disappear in a sea of shining black ink. Here there is nothing to worry or trouble you, and in its absence you can focus entirely on the pleasing shapes of the characters and their exacting forms. That is at least in theory. The Shogun's Voice still rings in your ears, his proclamation of alliance with the Yalpageshig prince filling your mind. As you close your eyes to focus, you see Mother's impassive face as she watches him relay orders she had not given. Did she know? Was she part of the plan and simply forgot the charade? Did she simply not care?

Your fingers grip tightly on the pen. Almost too tight. You feel it slip before it does, and you ease your grip. The calligraphy remains immaculate, if formulaic and devoid of soul and spirit.

"I've always found the Frontier Annals such a calming subject for calligraphy." You state, raising your eyes from the palm leaf paper.

The low, carved mahogany desk in front of you is adorned with inlaid gold and a thousand fanciful patterns in the shape of beasts and men of all sorts. In traditional Shogunal style, it is not very high, not even reaching above your knees when you stand up. To use it, you have to bend over on the silken pillows beneath you. On the right side of the table a statuette of the divine Elder, Eight Vermillion Chosen Glory, stands in amber and on the table in the room's middle the sweet scent of ambergris wafts smoky serpent-like from an incense burner of jade and tumbaga. Faint rays of sunlight illumine the room around you, the glory of the evening sun glittering in all the shades of heavenly red fire catching on surfaces of silver and glass and making the patterns on the luxurious rugs of silk and cotton - from far-off places with names like Pershwa and Chiaroscuro - dance and play like animals in the wild.

"I understand that." Wave chimes in from the other end of the room after a pregnant silence, "It has very elegant sentences."

Scratch scratch, the sound of her pen on the palm paper and the serpent-snaking form of the characters; the Unfolding of Ten Thousand Scrolls. She is at least twice as far into her calligraphy as you are, something unusual given your usually superior skill in the art. You can't read it all on its head and so far from here, only a few characters here and there and the characteristic shape of the introduction.

"The Unfolding? Which part?" You ask, gesturing at the paper below her hovering hands.

"I always found the Unfolding and similar manuscripts in Ornament-style too bothersome. All those radicals and colours required is so much work!" You petulantly complain to no one in particular.

The rains
Falling as petals
Dancing in the square
The lights embrace our city
A release

She quotes a five-stanza poem. You are familiar with it. It is the same poem that Six Gold Impassioned Exhortation recites in the Unfolding to describe the ceaseless fall of projectiles during the Realm's siege of Keinginan-i-Gehan. The beauty of the poem comes from its dual meanings; before the Unfolding's popularization of the poem, it was recited at festivals to celebrate weddings and other joyful events. To Shogun-Banu Impassioned Exhortation, the joyful rains had been arrows and the lights of pleasure embracing the city had been flames. You always wondered what Impassioned Exhortation's release had been. Had it been the release of her tears of sorrow when she overlooked her city's fall from the hills? Or had she merely been a tired woman grateful that she finally knew what would happen and she could do no more to stay the hand of fate? You suppose that's why the poem is so beautiful. You could never know. Wave's meaning is clear to you.

You sigh and breathe deeply of the incense. "What do you think of the Unfolding's style?" You ask of her, finishing another set of diacritics on your own piece and looking away from Wave to the sea and sinking sun.

"I've always found its likening of the Shogunal army and its auxiliaries to a two-headed snake, each head biting the other in competition over the same prey that would whet the appetite of either quite evocative." She says brusquely.

"The characterization of the Realm as a hunting hawk, vulnerable to the Shogunal army yet superior by its ability to fly above and unburdened by the two-headed rivalry, does a good job of presenting the conflict, I feel."

After a short pause she adds, "Though I do admit that some of it is probably authorial bias on account of the author being barred from the command she requested." You wince internally; the comparison of the two-headed serpent of the Unfolding and the joint Yalpageshig-Shogunal force that would challenge the sitting Mirza of Yalpagesh is not lost on you.

"Mmm." You make an indistinct noise of agreement and close your eyes briefly to consider her words. What could you possibly answer to that? Rising Song's voice interrupts your stream of thought and you breathe a sigh of relief; you won't have to answer.

"Always found its use of the divine particularly interesting. Compare it to something like the Ornament or Water-Flame Records- or Hell, even Praises-"

Wave rolls her eyes and interrupts, "Praises was written in the Mercury Era, that's not a fair comparison!"

Song continues as if Wave hadn't spoken. Something she often does now that you think about it. You suppress a giggle. The two are truly like water and fire. How they became friends eludes you. Well no, it doesn't really. The answer is you.

"As I was saying." Song continues, "You read Unfolding without context? You'd think it was written at least four Epochs ago. By all the divine Elders, it makes the Book of Praises seem like it was written by a stuffy imperial monk!" That gets a laugh out of even Wave, and you all spend a couple minutes laughing at the idea of the author of Praises - one of the most ancient works of Shogunal composition, allegedly dating back to the very overthrow of the Anathema themselves - being some stuffy monk from the Realm who has conniptions at the very idea of showing reverence to a divine Elder's grave. A ridiculous image.

Eventually the laughing gives way to a stony silence as you and Wave both catch the grim implication hidden in the statement. Unlike other classics of the Shogunate, the Unfolding ends relatively recently. Little more than about a hundred years ago. Everyone is familiar with its end; the conquest of the integral Shabkhost province and the collapse of the Shogunate's eastern border all the way until the Karvand river. It is hard to read the Unfolding and all its absurd elements, such as divine Elders rising from their grave to instruct descendants, the Dragons themselves proclaiming fates and casting men low, great epics across the cycle of reincarnation without taking it as a commentary on the ultimate futility of resisting the Shogunate's doom.

Despite relying more openly on elements that any orthodox Immaculate knows happen only in stories more than even sermons and praise-songs, the conclusion of the Unfolding could not be more somber; bad generalship, bad decisions and bad spending lose wars, not the decisions of the divine. You ball your fists, almost forgetting the delicate pen in your hand.

"It's not fair." You mutter and try for a bit of ad-hoc poetry.

Great ancestors
All great warriors
Ten-thousand great dragons gone
Spent before my time came
What for?

The five stanzas are not your proudest work and the metre is horrible, but you make up for it with the rare display of raw emotion invested. Sulking, you lean back against the wall, the pen left to lie on the table as you stare hopelessly at the emotionless face of Chosen Glory. You wonder what she would have done in your situation.

You don't get to consider much before Song smashes right through your line of thought.

"That was the worst metre I have ever heard." You let out a snort more out of reflex than genuine amusement and let her know through your expression that the attempt to cheer you up has thoroughly failed. When you meet her gaze, you get the impression that she was more than aware that would happen but tried nonetheless.

"I appreciate the criticism, Song." You say gently. She looks conflicted before shrugging her shoulders and reciting a poem as well.

Fate passes
A heartbeat stops
A young body fails
A heart once silent remains
I shrug.

You all sit in silence. Song is right in a sense; there is little you can do. And were you Exalted - you wince internally once more as you remind yourself of your failure to Exalt - there would also be very little you could do. Mother is Exalted, and she too is powerless. Fate abides as fate must, you suppose. In the face of such impotence, you can't help but be...

Article:

[ ] Resigned- Ultimately, that is how the world is. Fate comes and goes. Empires rise and fall. Men live and die. Come anger, come rage, come weeping, come sound and fury and the gnashing of teeth; fate's calm judgement remains the same. Not even the Exalted can stay the hand of fate once decided and the greatest hero can not return to life what death has claimed. Is that sad? Is that unfair? You don't know, but you suppose there is little you can do to change it. In a sense, it is comforting to know that fate was decided before your birth, and that you should simply focus your mind on other things. Is this the release that Impassioned Exhortation described? (This is a personality vote. Holiest Gift will be resigned to fate.)

[ ] Angry - How is it fair that your fate is not your own? You weren't the one who spent the fortunes of the Shogunate like soldiers spend their coin on waste. You didn't ask to be made heir of a doomed empire. It's not fair that you have to shoulder such a burden when others get to comfortably die first. Yeah, let's make the un-Exalted heiress have to face the Realm and all its satrapies, Yalpagesh, an economy that can barely sustain itself and a little more on top. That seems like a fair fight. Did you in a past life conduct some sin against cosmic order that you should be rendered the victim of a cosmic joke? How about fate comes and faces this herself instead of you. (This is a personality vote. Holiest Gift will be angry at fate.)

You steadily talk the evening away, discussing first poetry and the fate of your common Shogunate, and then more private matters and joke and laugh with one another as you eventually always do no matter how grim the subject. For despite the judgemental vagaries of fate and the dooms that may befall you, little is stronger than the friendship of three girls born into what some call the Age of Sorrows. And few people can spend their time - spend their energy - on such miseries for long. And so it is that you three also turn to laughter and smiles, for in spite of all that is outside your power, life must go on until the thread is cut and the final breath exits the mouth. As Song put it, a heart once silent remains so, but there is little to do but shrug at the course of life's flow. Driftwood and flotsam in the great river is all you are, and that is okay sometimes, you suppose.

And the next day, life also goes on. The day-cycles pass and the season of Wood this year is hot and humid. Though each passing day repeats the disappointment of your continuing failure to Exalt, life goes on nonetheless. The monsoon comes unreasonably early and so do rumors of all sorts of portents; raining frogs and blood from the Jati Isles and great auroras of mad colours on horizons unseen to any but a few court seers. Your life has none of that chaos and tumult in it and proceeds much as you are used to, until a fateful court session much like the fateful one, where the Shogunate proclaimed its support for that damned Seizing-Prey-as-a-Falcon, that now seemed to you so distant. It is a hot day outside and Danaa'd lashes the world with rain outside, at the height of the monsoon season. But inside, it is always sunny in the presence of the radiant Peacock Dais and were it not for the muffled sound of rain drumming outside, you could easily have forgotten which season it was. Such is normal at the Shogunal court.

But before your seated Mother and the standing Voice and yourself is a prostrating man, his body entirely stretched out and his palms against the same floor that his lips all but kiss. Equal measures sweat and rain drip from his body, and despite his best efforts to breathe softly into the rug beneath him, you can hear his ragged and exhausted breath all the way from there. You hear the Voice raise his voice and question the man as he always does, and you hear in the man's voice the clear cadence of a soldier unused to court. Unlike Mother, you do little to conceal the quizzical look that plays out across your face. The soldier's arrival has not been scheduled, and he only arrived a little while ago. From Two Brown Cutting Voice, the prajuritkhwaday of the expeditionary force. For the appointed commander of the Shogunal force now in Yalpagesh could only mean one of two things.

"Your Most Divine Shogunal Highness," he begins and you smile inside and try not to laugh at the mangled blending of the two styles and lack of the court address, "it is on behalf of her armipotent ladyship the prajuritkhwaday of the Eastern District Expeditionary Force that I am come to kneel unto your feet and beg of thee permission to speak of our deeds in foreign lands and the suppression of those that have rebelled against the world-governing Shogun."

Unfortunately for your bursting curiosity, he is trained enough in court etiquette to request the Shogun's permission to speak and you have to do your best to not issue the command yourself. Luckily, the Voice seems to be just as interested as you and issues the command almost immediately without even waiting for Mother's approval. Once again you cannot help but wonder if he has taken the true power or if Mother is simply playing her lazy part in a shared charade.

"Speak thee now, thou message-bearing courier, thou paladin of the written word!" You can hear a small hint of impatience in the Voice and permit yourself a small smile at his (insignificant) error in the performance of his court role. It is not much, but it is something.

"Your Most Divine Shogunal Highness!" He pushes his upper body up from the sixth rank bow, keeping his eyes on the floor, and prostrates himself for you and Mother again before pulling his body back so he is merely kneeling and pressing his head against the floor.

"We marched into the Eastern District and the walled cities there, rather than resist us, opened their gates and gave us the triumphal entry, your Most Divine Shogunal Highness. The prince and the prajuritkhwaday entered together and west of the great Karvand, the prajuritkhwaday rode in the front. The prince proclaimed that the Eastern District had been returned to the Shogunate, and the prajuritkhwaday swelled our ranks with salaried troops from the Eastern District cities so that the size of our army became five thousand people under arms in total and at least twice as many followers. The garrison at Kervenetlik- I mean Karvandbenteng your Divine Shogunal Highness" he quickly corrects himself from the Yalpageshig name to your amusement, "we reduced the garrison and moved on once the Eastern District was in Shogunal hands once again."

He pauses momentarily, and your mother signs a few characters to the Voice who relays the question. "Thou swift-horsed courier, though thy tidings are as unto Insightful Mela's call, our Most High Divine Highness wondereth for what reason doth the armipotent prajuritkhwaday send a messenger with such haste to announce these events?" You have to admit to yourself that this is further than you had expected you would ever get, but a little part of you is somehow still disappointed at the lack of some decisive battle to at least wrap up things nicely.

The soldier clumsily attempts to respond in court dialect before switching back to the demotic speech, "Th- your Most High Divine Highness, it was then that we crossed the Karvand and marched into the former lost provinces of your great Shogunate. We encountered the Yalpageshig at the Dashat plain, and her armipotent ladyship drew up the army for tent battle. She drew chains between the wagons so that their horses could not reach us, and with our Yalpageshig auxiliaries and the prince, we repulsed them and gave chase, slaying many of them as we put them against the river, for their horses feared our firewands. Then we advanced further and seized many well-garrisoned cities west of the Karvand too. However, in our second battle, we emerged victorious though many were wounded including our wind-speaker and the prince himself, who was speared through the shoulder and in the thigh several times. The Yalpageshig lord- the usurper that is - has fled from us further into his country, but we now number more than ten thousands in fighting-persons, your Most Divine Highness."

At this, the Voice fails to conceal his surprise, though he quickly gets it under control. The rest of the court is less controlled, and the court is aflutter with whispering and what you presume is the sound of schemes being birthed. Mother quickly puts a stop to it with a rare wave of her hand and the soldier continues. Your mouth is dry and it feels as if your stomach has been filled with flying insects; not one but two decisive victories. You cast your gaze in the direction of the Voice and Mother.

Maybe they had a plan.

Maybe they knew.

"Your Most Divine Shogunal Highness, her most armipotent ladyship, your most subservient and humble prajuritkhwaday would like to request your permission to advance further into the country and lay siege to Kemenanganih."

This time, the Voice looks to Mother. Her face somehow impassive despite the momentous news, she seems to weigh her options before calling you over with a sign. She whispers in your ear and you relay her words with all the regal glory of the heiress' voice.

"Unto thee, thou messenger of divine portent, the crown-dispensing world-governing Shogun granteth a peshvenagih of sixth rank that thou mayest shepherd and protect it in the lands of the Eastern Direct west of the Karvand River, and a fine robe worthy of a talent's worth, and the rank of pesanbed to the Shogunal court. The request of her most armipotent ladyship, our honoured and worshipful prajuritkhwaday is granted. We order her to advance at once that she seeth fit and her host is readied for a siege. Thine message shall be delivered by wind-words. Rest thee thine soul and vessel before thee settest out in the night-spearing morrow." The words of the court dialect come as second nature to you. For a moment, you are imperial and Shogunal; the woman who will one day become Shogun-Banu.

In the corner of your eye, you think the Voice casts an annoyed gaze in your direction, but you cannot look in his direction to confirm. Is he afraid that Mother speaks through you to weaken his power or do he and Mother share the charade and she is merely attempting to allay suspicion by speaking through you?

"Takest thee thine leave, thou victory-bearing emissary." You relay, and return to your stand at the pillar to Mother's right.

The court proceeds as usual, but your head remains full of thoughts, buzzing in your mind and keeping you up even as the court is adjourned. A victory for the Shogunate, the Yalpageshig army in rout not once but several times, all the cities west of the Karvand returned and the first among the eastern cities subjugated as well, an army that would soon march on Kemenanganih and lay it to the siege itself. Perhaps fate had judged differently than you thought it had. Mayhaps this was not the end of the Shogunate just yet. You silently wonder if this was how it had felt to live at the time of Grasping Creation's reign before her initial successes. Would it be that you would come to inherit a victorious Shogunate, perhaps? As you make your way through the palace, you lose yourself in the sea of your thoughts, wondering if this is what victory feels like. At the end of the day, you think you feel…

Article:

[ ] Optimistic - No Shogunal army has ever laid siege to Kemenganih before for the entire duration of the Yalpageshig reign. It had once been a significant regional capital, and while armies had laid siege to it when it hosted rebels, the Yalpageshig had proven too mighty to challenge. That the Yalpageshig army was routed repeatedly shows that perhaps, the once-mighty dynasty was not as strong as it once was, and that perhaps fate was with you this time. Maybe the Eastern District, Shabkhost, the Karvand and more would once again be in Shogunal possession. You cannot tell, but it seems undoubtable that you live in times of great change.

[ ] Pessimistic - Though routed and beaten, Yalpagesh is simply larger than the Shogunate. It can afford to give more. Many a war has been lost on the walls of some impenetrable siege, and you can't help but wonder if the Shogunal army - even with its swollen numbers and Two Brown Cutting Voice's leadership - might not be marching into disaster. With the Eastern District poorly garrisoned and an already significant number of wounded soldiers, it would seem to you that the Yalpageshig only need to be lucky once. If the Shogunal army routs, it has little to defend its path or deter the inevitably pursuing Yalpageshig army, and if that is the case, there are little places they can go but Keinginan-i-Gehan itself.

 

[Chehrazad]

My very deepest apologies for the radio silence, I was very busy and some stuff happened in my life. Next update will be far sooner!

A Bright Star for the City of Cities, pt. 1

Spoiler: Winning Votes

[X] Resigned
[X] Optimistic

In the name of the divine Elders,
the holy Immaculate Dragons,
and their incarnated heavenly Shogun;
the most gracious, the most merciful.
My dear, I learned one thousand words of wisdom,
of those I chose four hundred,
of those I chose eight,
which are the monarchs of all wisdom:
Do not be the companion of one quick to anger.
Do not enter into discussion with a senseless person.
Do not make your meals with a drunkard or a liar.
Do not hear the words of a gossip or a liar.
Consult with the one who is well-behaved, well-informed, intelligent and good-natured.
Avoid the company of the vengeful.
Hold in respect one who is a notable and wise; ask their advice and listen to it.
Deny the Anathema in all your deeds and all your words.
-The Counsels of the divine Elder Assakawat, from time immemorial​

As the rainy monsoon season passes, it gives way to the dry summer climate of the fire season. The summer is the home season of many things you delight in: lounging on balconies, trying out stylish umbrellas and enchanting dresses with your friends, the refreshing taste of sharbat in the flavours of lemon, tamarind, pomegranate and rose petals and touring the city in the covered howdah of a royal yeddim. Truly a season of innumerable delights! But the bright season is also home to other things, and as the muddy terrain and weeping skies of the monsoon give way to the sun's unclouded eye and the warmth of summer, you know that the war season is upon you. A flurry of couriers and messengers let you follow the war in speed you never thought possible, and throughout the season you feel your spirits rise with the sun.

News from the campaign in Yalpagesh seem to arrive faster than monsoon rain and if the news did not come from the prajuritkhwaday herself, you would find it hard to believe them all. Another battle with the Mirza's army should have seen him decisively on the run and his entourage in the prajuritkhwaday's captivity and the north of Yalpagesh should stand aflame and rebellions against their Yalpageshig lords threaten to break their control entirely. Delivered over time and in bits, rebellion by rebellion and battle by battle, it became easy to take them step by step and their absurdity became only evident when you stopped to think of them as a whole. Now they seem so distant to you, but the greatest news have yet to reach you. For on a warm summer day, in a somehow warmer summer court, another exhausted messenger reaches your court and pronounces before the court of the Shogunate that the city of Kemenanganih had fallen and that her armipotent ladyship, the prajuritkhwaday Two Brown Cutting voice, had entered the city and installed the prince Seizing-Prey-as-a-Falcon as Mirza of all Yalpagesh.

You still remember the silence of the court. How does one react when the world is remade before your eyes?

A little part of you asks if you don't remember the silence because it is still with you. The shadow of Yalpagesh, that you have lived your life in, is gone.

And yet the old Mirza, the one whose name you do not even know, is still alive. And yet the prajuritkhwaday, who allegedly serves her Shogunte so selflessly, is still pursuing him.

Will that terrible shadow of Yalpagesh remain gone? That is not within your power to answer. The future was much more comfortable when it seemed so certain; even if what seemed certain was your doom.

Those are your thoughts as you make your way across the Image-of-Creation Square, the centre of a small army of courtiers and servants. Though you are faceless to the public beneath your wide-brimmed silken hat and its layered chiffon veil and might as well be a shadow in your robes, you command the attention of every single one with your smallest breath. This migration across the palatial plaza happens every year on the same date, in the same sweltering heat and to the same sweet scents of rosewater, lily-of-the-valley and ambergris that make up the essential repertoire of court perfumes to cover up those human smells of sweat and frustration that the summer heat creates. The laughter, the whispers that are significantly louder than their owners think, the sound of silken robes brushing against one another and the oohs and aahs of observers whose eyes pass over gauzy veils, bearded guards and colourful fans are also the same every year.

But this year, it is different.

Soon, you know, you will cross behind the temple gates escorted by your closest attendants. They will unclothe you, and you will be robed in the ceremonially humble temple garments. Then you will pass into the inner holiness of the Sublime Tranquil Grave Temple and there you will eat a cake of figs and drink sour doogh. To remind you of the humble past of your ancestors when Shoguns ruled from their tents, you'll be told. And then you will pray. For the rest of the day and the rest of the night, you will pray. In the heart of the temple, there will be none but you, and though you may rest or ration your food, you will pray; for a secure succession, for victory over your enemies, but most of all for the continuation of the Shogunate. This is a ritual you have practiced many times, and even when in the captivity of the Protectorate, you were permitted to return home to perform it. But this year, it feels different. This year it feels necessary. It's in the air.

You stop before the temple gates and take it in. Encircling the wood-and-gold temple gates is an enormous blind arch, the marble stone playing host to innumerable paintings of all the divine Elders and the deeds of the Dragons, their faces artfully concealed to not bring mockery upon them. When you were younger, you could spend hours admiring the facade and interrogating passing monks about every little detail. A weak smile plays upon your lips beneath the veil, before muscle memory and the demands of ritual assert themselves. Folding your silken parasol, you strike the great door of the Sublime Tranquil Grave with the iron-capped tip and open your mouth to speak.

"I am Eight Vermilion Holiest Gift of the Five Days of Mela, Heir Apparent and acclaimed by the notables and dignitaries of the Great Terrestrial Shogunate, Shogun-Banu-to-be and Commander of the Faithful of the Grand Exalted Host! By the right of the Shoguns, I demand my entrance!" You shout, your voice snapping through the air with verve and command.

"I know her not!" Comes the ritual reply. You respond according to the protocol.

"I am Eight Vermilion Holiest Gift of the Five Days of Mela, student of the Interior Court School, devotee of the Five Immaculate Dragons and walking in the path of occulted Pasiap Who Illuminates Both Worlds With Majesty and Power, taught by the sangha of the Great Terrestrial Shogunate and unfailing in my piety! By the right of the Dragons, I demand my entrance!" You shout again, striking at the gate. You have had this exchange many times.

"I know her not!" Replies the monk behind the door. You have not heard his voice before, so it must be a newer monk doing the reception.

"I am Eight Vermilion Holiest Gift of the Five Days of Mela, a humble link in the Great Chain of Being, a mere servant in the Perfected Hierarchy!" There is no begging for entrance in the last part of the ritual, you already know the reply.

"All pearls in the Necklace of Creation are known to the Immaculate Dragons. Thou art welcome to enter our holy gates." And the gates open before you. Adopting the slow and stilted ceremonial gait required of the Shogunal rituals, you step within the gates, only Wave following you as the remainder of the court stays behind.

The interior of the Sublime Tranquil Grave is just as gorgeous as the outside. To evoke the Immaculate joining of heavenly and earthly harmony, pillars join the ground and roof like stalactites protruding from the ceiling and impaling the floor. Turquoise decorations wind their way around tiles, circling pillars like serpents and Immaculate manthras carved into fine-hewn stone and since filled with jade cover almost every surface in the temple. The ceremonial weapons ,commonplace in Immaculate temples to ward away the influence of the Anathema, hang from the walls in all kinds of shapes and sizes; spears, swords and many more. This grandeur is one which you are intimately familiar with, yet nonetheless your eyes still drink thirstily of it as if you stood here for the first time. Perhaps they will always do so. The ritual proceeds apace, monks turning their backs to you as you walk towards the inner chambers of the temple while Wave takes off a piece of your clothes for every pair of pillars you pass in tact with the ceremonial gait. At the end, you stand nearly naked but for your undergarments. This part used to embarrass you, now you barely really consider it. Your thoughts are elsewhere.

You let Wave clothe you. A simple cotton skirt that barely reaches your knees calls to mind the war-garb of soldiers, and the red tunic and beige vest above it that clothe your upper body are no different. You raise your legs, one after the other, and allow Wave to fit sandals to them. You always found this part of the ritual exceedingly funny. You have serious doubts that even the poorest Shogun would ever wear clothes like this; not even in the days of the devil-kings were your ancestors so impoverished! When Wave has finished clothing you, she ceremonially kneels before you and presents a well-aged roundshield of iron, and an undecorated kris-sword resting upon it; the panoply of the soldiery. You each play your part in the ritual to perfection. In the moment, you are a soldier going off to war, and she is there to see you safe to return. You set the shield upon your arm and hang the sword off your belt, and you make the promise to return should the Dragons permit you to. You turn your back to Wave and step into the inner sanctum of the temple. You realize that you are sweating. You're not used to having to pray for the Shogunate's survival for real. It was always just a ritual.

The innermost temple sanctum is a different building. Not just in style, but it is in fact literally different; the humble pentagonal enclosure has no signs of the glazed marble of the outer temple, the elaborate pillars and eye-captivating icons. You let your eyes pass over the wizened walls of fired brick, the gaps between them free of the touch of mortar, and wonder about the ones who built it. This room predates the temple. That much is known, because it was here when the Shoguns first went west. In this room lies buried the divine Elder Assakawat, the monks tell you, though you have heard them wonder about its construction before much as you do right now. Your eyes fall on the elaborate characters drawn on the otherwise undecorated sarcophagus resting in the middle; animal shapes and drawings of tools arranged in no order that seems sensible. If anyone can read them, or if they even mean anything, neither you nor the monkhood knows. In each of the room's five corners stands an altar to their respective Immaculate Dragon; unlike a regular temple room with four corners and Pasiap in the middle, each Dragon has a corner in this room. The jade busts glitter faintly in the firelight.

You turn your attention to the more immediately important things. At the feet of the sarcophagus lies a plate bearing a simple fig cake, a silver drinking vessel full of doogh - the fermented yoghurt drink of soldiers and farmers - and a bowl filled with beer yeast, a waterskin and numerous other ingredients and tools. You sigh, lift the kris-knife and speak.

"In the name of the divine Elders, the holy Immaculate Dragons and their incarnated heavenly Shogun-Banu; the most gracious, the most merciful. Eight Vermilion Holiest Gift of the Five Days of Mela am I, to the great Immaculate Dragons and their divine Elders do I devote this meal!"

You sit cross-legged, drinking some doogh and eating a piece of fig cake as you imagine a soldier might on campaign. The food is pleasant if simple, as it always is, but as you eat, your mind turns to the campaign being waged while you sit here in seclusion. They say that Kemenganih has fallen and that the prajuritkhwaday has triumphed. You believe them, for your upbringing has taught you nothing but the harsh realism of the position that the Shogunate stands in; that much is sure. But as much as you believe them, and as much as you want to have faith that things will be better, you turn your gaze to the faceless bust of occulted Pasiap and can't help but ask yourself if it can really be that simple. It feels strange to sit face to face with history being made. You take another bite of the cake, saying the requisite manthra, and turn your gaze to look at the bust of Hesiesh, wondering how the Reciter of Loud Hymns and Efficacious Prayers felt as he sat meditative in his cave while Mela battled with devil-kings and demons outside. Did he too feel doubts? Or did he know his purpose from the start? You let out another tired sigh and very unregally sling your shield over to his bust, wincing as the metal clanks against the stone floor.

Carrying over the waterskin and bowl of yeast to Danaa'd's bust, you start forming a dough from the yeast to knead and shape. Once you have a nice dough form, you prostrate yourself before the Dragon, letting out a loud manthra that reverberates through the room and echoes in your ears. Reciting the One-Thousand-Elders Chant, you ceremonially lay your shield on the ground and pour palm oil over it, placing the dough on top and covering it with a piece of cloth to let it rise before Mela's bust. You rise and circle the room, prostrating yourself five times before each Immaculate Dragon, making sure to never stop singing the ritual hymns except to breathe. In the silent room, there are no other noises but the soft sound of your sandals against the floor and the pleasant echo of your voice against the walls; here you are no heir or Shogun-to-be, merely yourself. A "common soldier against the lie of the demon-kings", as the monks would put it.

After an hour and a half of prayer, you return to your dough, carrying the shield to the bust of Sextes Jylis. You shape the dough into a flat disk spread over the iron surface of the roundshield and start decorating it with hand-torn date fruits and goat cheese. You pray to Sextes Jylis and thank him for his continued protection of the good animals and plants, gifted to mankind, against the Anathema. Finally, you set down the shield before Hesiesh's bust, lighting his ritual fire and placing it beneath the shield; as the dough warms and the goat cheese melts, you remain prostrated and recite the Hesiesh-Holy Glory-Hymn. Thanking Hesiesh for the alliance of fire and man, and his protection of the act of prayer so that the Anathema cannot seize upon it, you finally raise yourself from the ground to sit cross legged and turn towards Pasiap with your finished bread.

"Thou Illuminateth Both Worlds With Glory and Power, O Lord Pasiap, thou holy one! As thou were born a slave, the littlest speck raised to the most sublime glories, am I now but a humble soldier; a great star lowered to the dust before thine holiness. So did thee humble the devil-kings and so doth thee bring Shoguns lower than the dusts. To thee do I dedicate this meal, of goat's cheese, simple dough and humble figs; fit for a soldier against the Lie, fit for a soldier in thine army." You raise up a ripped-off piece of bread and take a bite, praying a full short prayer to Pasiap between each new bite. As the day - and eventually night - goes on, you continue your prayers, your mind each time turning to thoughts of distant wars and your mother's impassive face as the Voice spoke on her behalf without a single finger movement. And as you imagine yourself a humble soldier in the camp of Two Brown Cutting Voice, dreaming of the day she can return to the City of the World's Desire, you fall on your knees before the bust of occulted Pasiap deep within the inner sanctum of the Sublime Tranquil Grave and pray.

Article:

[ ] Peace - You beseech the Dragons for peace, that there will be contentment between the nations and hope for a day in which you can greet the princes of Yalpagesh, not as foes but as brothers.

[ ] The Shogunate - You beg of the Dragons for the survival of the Shogunate, that the legacy of your ancestors is not ended. You pray that the City of Cities may still stand for a thousand years.

[ ] Your Friends - You pray that your friends, your beloveds, Wave and Song and more, make it through all of this unscathed. You pray that they will be safe, regardless of what happens and whatever hardships you must endure.

[ ] Yourself - You pray for your survival. You are sure that there are more important things to pray for.

When the morning comes after a long hour of prayers broken up by rests, a monk knocks on the doors before the rest of the temple wakes. Outside the ritual space, it would be a scandal if the monks saw the heir apparent without her covering garments. True to the tradition, Wave has slept outside the door and stands ready - though having done a very poor job of concealing the tired rings under her eyes - to receive you and clothe you for public once again. You slip outside the temple, just the two of you, and stand in the otherwise empty Image-of-Creation Square, taking in the morning fog. As with all other aspects of this ritual, it is not the first time you've stood here, and you are sure that it won't be the last either. Despite that, it feels somehow special, like a magical curtain has been cast over you.

"I couldn't stop thinking of Yalpagesh, Wave. And the war, you know? It wouldn't leave my mind." You cautiously say after a long pause.

"I know how you feel." She says curtly, dropping the usual honorific.

You think back to your talk months ago, when she was the terrified one and you assured her there would be no wars. "What do you think of the victories in the war?"

"I'd prefer not to talk about it," She responds after a short pause, and looks away, "your divine Highness." She adds eventually.

"I apologize."

"Don't."

You are both silent as you make your way across the square and to the palace. You want to speak to her, to ask her if she's okay or if she needs your help. You do none of those things. You remain silent, give each other the customary farewell greetings and then go to your respective rooms to rest and recuperate for the remainder of the day. What began as a decision to recuperate for the rest of the day comes to encompass the night as well, and it is with a heart full of anxieties and fears that you greet the night.

You just hope you're feeling better in the morning.

---

You sleep well, and strong black morning tea is enough to take the edge off the little bit of grogginess that remains. By the time you're out under the early morning sun, among the bright greens of the jungle, you're raring to go. The tiger hunt is an important tradition in the Shogunate, and also simply plain fun. Normally, tigers are hunted in prepared areas - Shogunal parks or other courtly hunting grounds - but today is different. A few days' ride from Keinginan-i-Gehan lies the dependent village of Khwartanah, and it is the residents of Khwartanah who not many days ago sent a petition to the Shogunate for aid against a supposedly man-eating tiger. And it is on their behalf that you now sit astride your horse, relaxing in the amber-silk saddle of the powerful creature beneath you, enjoying the view of the dry summer forests. In the fiery season, the trees shed their leaves and become like skeletal growths that rise from the forest floor and provide ample vision for your trained eyes.

All around you, to the left and your right and behind you, members of the hunting party walk or ride forward, the sound of dry leaves crunching underfoot and whispered banter filling up the air. Such a vast hunting assembly is no new innovation, but quite the standard for tiger hunts; were there any nearby, you would surely scare them off with your mere presence. Rather the goal is to catch the tiger in its territory so that you can surround it with beaters and direct it into a prepared ground where you will kill it. And so, you ride forth leisurely, now and then adjusting the feathers and pearls in your iket hat and enjoying the pleasant shine of the sun above in your brocade tunic. Hanging from your right hip is a gilded gorytos, your bow and arrows resting comfortably within. To your left, Song sits comfortably on her own tawny-skinned horse, the curved sword at her left rattling softly in tune with the step of her mount. Bait has already been laid out near strategically chosen water sources to ensure that the tiger will not stray too far away. Now there is nothing to do but wait and survey.

It does not take long. In little more than an hour, one of the hired village boys runs up to you, clearly a mixture of terrified and overawed by your presence, as he throws himself to the ground and announces that he spotted the tiger near a certain baiting spot. You smile and hand him a suitable sum of mekh-coins, then give the order to proceed.

In only a few minutes, the sound of hoarse shouts, bells and whistles and the clangor of cymbals fill the air. In no more than a minute, beaters and shouters echo the clarion from other ends of the forest, and shouting-boys render themselves hoarse as they run back and forward screaming where the tiger runs. Here and there, the distant sky explodes with fire as a thrown dragon javel casts the forest in its baleful red glare and the forest is all pandemonium, smaller animals leaping and running in every direction. Panic fills the forest and your line slowly but surely begins to advance through the shrubland and underbrush; the sound of snapping twigs and crunching leaves a junior partner in the duet of beaters and hundreds of walking feet. You spot your first glimpses of the tiger as you trot forwards, the striped creature visible for a few seconds through the leafless trees. Larger than any tiger you have ever seen before, the beast is almost as large as the horse you sit upon. You smile with your teeth like a barbarian; you can already feel the exhilaration of the hunt.

The tiger is running now, moving towards the hills where you have stationed a third group of beaters and your smile widens at the joy of a successfully sprung trap. As they hear you approaching, two dragon javelins fly into the air, exploding with fire and fury and briefly paralyzing your prey with fear, before the clamorous symphony of thrown stones, chaotic cymbals and cacophonous voices resumes from the hills. Your own beater line approaches, and the tiger is caught between the hills and the plains. Steadily, you separate from the line behind you, advancing on your horse and drawing your bow. Now comes your part to play. You concentrate on the beast in front of you, let your eyes glide over the ragged fur, the night-black stripes, the paws still coloured by hints of dried blood sticking to tufts of fur. It is not the first time that you have faced a tiger, but when you meet its ruddy amber eyes every last doubt that you may have had that this tiger was a man-eater fades like mist. Tigers you have faced before, but never a man-eater. You put the horse into a canter and pull back the string of your bow, loosening an arrow against the beast, only for the tiger to throw itself to the side, a small cloud of dust emerging as paws meet dry grass. You raise an eyebrow. That is definitely not normal tiger behaviour. You quickly string and loose another arrow as you turn your horse to circle it, this time enjoying the ensuing growl of pain as the arrow sets within its shoulder.

You don't get to enjoy it for long. As if to size you up, the tiger's eyes pass you over, and then it seems to make a decision, turning tail and running straight at a line of beaters towards the deeper forest. That is not normal tiger behaviour. You quickly set the horse into a gallop and can only gasp as the tiger falls upon a shocked beater, savaging him with its claws and quickly breaking the line meant to contain it, capitalizing on the surprise. You follow as fast as you can, splitting the line with a command and leaping over sticks and shrubs, turning your eyes entirely to the tiger's bounding shape in front of you as the rest of the world blurs past. A part of you is definitely enjoying this; the thrill of hunting a clever enemy and without the well-tried strategies of beaters and shouting. An even deeper part whispers to you that the great heroes of the Shogunate among your ancestors in ancient chronicles and literary manuscripts took their Second Breath on hunts like this; when something went wrong. But your conscious mind thinks none of that, for you only have eyes for the tiger and mind for the bow. You loosen another arrow in full gallop, shouting a cry of joyous triumph as you see the arrow embed itself within the tiger's behind. You swear that you can hear the growl of pain.

You are a gust of wind, a bolt of lightning. Left! Right! Over that trunk! Duck! The chase continues as you weave through the forest, lamenting the limits of a horse's ability to traverse forests. When you set out for the hunt not a single wind blew, but at the speed you ride your hair flutters behind you like a train. Still, even wounded the tiger is born for this environment and your poor horse must compensate for uncertain ground and reaching branches, and slowly but surely you find yourself losing it ahead. Where before the tiger was right ahead of you, it has become little more than an orange blur, occasionally glimpsed through the tangle of skeletal branches. And at one point, it is no longer there and you are alone, stopping the horse and letting it catch its breath.

You have not the slightest idea of where you are.

Tangles of naked roots, spires of bark and branch; all around you the trees seem to almost surround you, as if you are locked within a wooden panopticon. The forest that seemed before so alive and full of life seems now eerily silent, the clearing you find yourself in reminding you more of a courtyard than a jungle. When you turn, you are suddenly confused. You could swear you came in right there, yet the trees grow so thick that you can't pass through yourself, let alone your horse. You draw an arrow and nock it, keeping a whispered prayer in the name of Mela - Accordant to the Call of Battle - on your lips. Something is very, very wrong. You can feel your hairs stand on end as you survey the clearing around you and realize the obvious conclusion. This was not a clearing before, and the trees have moved.

Spirit-

You manage to think before a rustling sound alerts you, and you throw yourself to the side and off your horse, a spear of sharpened roots impaling the animal straight through the heart and directly up to where you sat just a split second ago. You can hear the drum-like beat of your heart and feel your skin flush with panicked blood underneath the coat of leaden paint that covers you.

No further spears come, but the eerie silence remains. The trees around you seem so tall and vast. Towering above you as if to say "We will bury you here. Your body will nourish our roots and your eyes will make ornaments for us." You shudder.

Mustering what illusions of courage you can, you pretend there is no shaking or fear in your voice. "Show thyself, thou spirit of the jungle! Strong thou might be, but know thee that every drop of blood that thine roots spill from mine body the world-governing Shogunate that dispenseth crowns and breaketh thrones shall avenge sevenfold upon your forest!"

The forest remains silent. Your ears catch a rustling beneath you, and you leap forward - just barely dodging a spear like the one that impaled your horse - and stumble as your foot catches on a root. You utter a curse as your right arm sticks to the ground, roots and stalks binding it tightly. In an instant, your left arm has drawn the sword at your belt and sheared the binding in two, only for you to find that your legs have been similarly bound while you were busy with your arm. Discarding the sabre as useless, you throw it away and pull your bow, holding the three arrows you manage to salvage from the gorytos in your left hand, one of them nocked and ready.

"Show thyself, thou spirit of the jungle! Art thou desirous of putting to an end the Shogunate, show thine face at least!" You hear yourself proclaim in court-speech with courage that you do not possess. You are not even sure you could really hurt the spirit if it did manifest.

From the opposite side of the wooden panopticon, feline paws step out from between the trees, a pair of eyes shining like amber staring into yours, black stripes on fiery orange and an arrow sticking out from its right shoulder. You suppose that there is little surprise in the man-eating tiger the size of your horse being some kind of unearthly spirit, that much is comforting at least. As the tiger approaches, it seems almost as if the beast is smiling patronizingly, a deadly calm ruling in its eyes.

"Mayhaps not the courtyard you are used to, little princess, hmm? I do say you look fabulous on your knees. Drop the bow and get your hands on the ground and we might make a fine courtier out of you yet." The tiger's voice is gentle and almost sweet, mocking as it is. A feminine voice that would not be out of place at the court. It lazily approaches, looking not the least concerned with the raised bow. "One supposes I should be more respectful, you are after all still managing to hold that bow, ineffective as it will prove."

"Kill me and this entire forest will burn to the ground, foul spirit." You once again manage to say with more courage than you have in your body.

"Very impressive and very scary." The tiger says, neither particularly impressed nor scared.

"However, I am no mere spirit and have nothing in particular to fear from your Shogunate. All your hundreds of beaters and retainers could comb this jungle for years, and not only would they not be able to penetrate into this space of ours, they would not even be able to see us." The tiger dashes aside the bow with an apathetic paw-strike, its maw close enough that you can smell the reek of its breath.

"If you are no mere spirit, then you must be Anathema." You observe, your voice remaining calm in defiance of all instincts in your body telling you to scream until your lungs burst and puncture.

"Very astutely observed, you must have gone to some kind of palace school. One would think you were a scholar." The tiger is suddenly not a tiger anymore, a woman seemingly no older than perhaps thirty sitting on a tree stump in its place. Her hair is neatly combed and tied beautifully into a loop behind her, a medallion tied to strings of beads resting on her forehead. Her skin is the same bronze colour as Wave without the leaden cosmetics that so predominate in the Shogunate, but her eyes remain a tiger's golden eyes, the minimal sclera at their edges as black as the stripes that covered her feline form. Her body is otherwise naked except for the hundreds of different pieces of jewelry that cover her body, hanging in strings of pearl and jewelry, medallions and necklaces. Her bare skin is full of tattoos - depicting animals, people and all sorts of creatures hunting and running - rubbed with firedust, so they seem more like flames beneath her skin.

"Anathema I am indeed, as you say". She smiles patronizingly and pulls out the arrow lodged in her shoulder, and you observe as the wound instantly seals itself behind it. "Though it would be much more polite to call me by my name, Seven Cerulean Laughing Dancer."

You remain silent.

"What? You're just going to remain silenced? You're faced with a demon out of warning tales and you're not even saying anything?" She mock-pouts as she pulls out the other arrow and snaps it between her fingers.

"I have little to say to the Anathema." You spit out with a mixture of contempt and faux-bravado.

"I suppose that's fair. You are the one kneeling right now anyways. Regardless, what you have to say doesn't really matter. In a minute, I will kill you, then eat your heart and then I will walk in your footsteps, take your shape and enjoy your life. You will be forgotten out here, and each pearl that adorns your body will follow me." She leans in close, cupping your face with her hands as she says that final part, her red-gold eyes reflecting you perfectly. She idly plays with one of the feathers in your headdress and a pearl necklace with another hand, and you notice that she has two pairs of arms, something you are quite sure that she did not have just before.

"And what then?" You ask, your voice miraculously exempt from shaking, "You will take my powerless position and be a good girl and stand still and silent at the weekly court sessions? You will talk to my friends and agree that you are equally powerless to do anything? You will write poems and reflect on the meaninglessness of your actions in the face of overwhelming duty?" You can feel a tinge of anger bubbling up within you. Did she just assume that your life was a cavalcade of unending luxuries and unbounded power?

She raises an eyebrow and leans out, resting her head on one of her four hands, though keeping another hand on the pearl necklace around your neck, pulling it downwards as if to force you to incline your head.

"Awww, is the little princess sad? Why don't you tell me all about it?" She smiles with all her teeth, and her mouth contains the sharp-toothed maw of a tiger.

"Only confused at what you would accomplish. Hopeful I may be, but in the court I am little more than a pretty ornament. You would be the ruler of a few rooms at most, not a Shogunate. And should Mother die and her Voice be silenced, doubtless someone else would take their place and you would simply be their puppet. My life comes contingent, after all, on not being Anathema." You can feel your voice beginning to shake as you desperately attempt to convince a shapeshifting she-demon not to consume your heart and steal your life.

"You are afraid." She observes. "I can hear your heart beating and smell your fear."

"I am." You concede, your voice cracking at the second syllable.

"And what then, if our Shogunate fails its war against Yalpagesh, Anathema?" You ask, stammering on the first few words, "What would you be then? Running away from a fallen state, having accomplished nothing, is what you would be doing!" You involuntarily raise your voice on the last few words, feeling your control slip.

"But I would not have lost anything either, really. Nothing gained, nothing lost." She retorts.

"If the end result is nothing, then the beginning is surely pointless." You reply, doing your best to not let the desperation seep into the cracks of your voice.

"Could the same not be said for your own doomed war with Yalpagesh?" She coos, clearly entertained more by the debate than by thoughts of eating your heart.

"I did not set that in motion, all I can do is hope that it succeeds."

"So you do believe in the war, then?"

"I believe in my duty to the Shogunate."

"Do you now?" She leans forward, clearly interested in your answer, cupping your face in her hands again. "Let's put that to the test."

"Now, answer me truthfully. What are you really fighting for, my little princess, hmm?"

Article:

[ ] Your Past - You are fighting for the legacy of the Shogunate, the weight of your ancestors on your shoulders, the history of a thousand years carried on your back. You fight for all that your predecessors have built, a polity that is larger and grander than Shoguns and their Voices, that is mightier than you and whose history puts even the great Realm to shame. You are fighting for the thousand poems you reference in daily talk, the high culture that you immerse yourself in with Wave and Song, the art that adorns the walls of temples and palaces.

[ ] Your Present - You are fighting for your friends, the weight of their fates on your shoulders, the smile of Song and the quivering voice of Wave begging you to reassure her that life will go on. You fight for the pointless daily rituals, for the whispering and the amusing intrigues and gossip of the ladies' court, for the people who happen to merely live in the Shogunate unconnected to the machinations of the court. You fight for the soldier so clearly unused to courtly speech nonetheless trying to explain himself to the Shogun.

[ ] Your Future - You are fighting for what you are owed and what you can owe your descendants, the weight of history not yet made on your shoulders. You are fighting for a husband or wife not yet married, you are fighting for temples and monuments not yet built, you are fighting for peace treaties and friendships not yet forged. You are fighting for what your predecessors spent and what you will rebuild, and for the tears that will go unshed, the houses that will one day adorn the worn-down streets of the City of the World's Desire once more.

 

[Chehrazad]

Apologies again for the radio silence! I was absolutely bombarded with stuff, now I have a job and slightly less reason to fear for financial security, so the quest is more than able to continue unabated.

A Bright Star for the City of Cities, pt. 2

Spoiler: Winning Votes

[X] Your Friends
[X] Your Future

Thou Sublime Presence, commander of the State and of Exalted heights and fortune, may the Dragons strengthen the foundations of thine State and height and fortune for ages together.

May I present you this letter that carrieth caravans of prayers with pleasant fragrance, and people with rose-coloured praises. The purpose of this letter is to state the following:

That earlier in Kahamanata [Khamnat], under the auspice of thine wisely-appointed and virtuous Satrap Protector, the sedition-mongering Yalapas of the land of beyond the mountains that mark the boundary of the domains within thine possession had attempted by means of their ill-starred armies to intervene in the affairs of the lands assigned to the Satrap Subsidiary of the city of Arahanaga [Arhang], and had even sent out a force to this end. Boasting of their claims from their fire-shooting armies, they opposed the victory-laden armies of thine Satrap Protector sent out from the feet of the throne that is the shadow of Mela upon Creation. Thus, many of thine faithful subjects died as they resisted like Mela in accordance with the verse, 'Where stands the pillar, it resists the roof´ and their souls were seized upon the wheel of reincarnation. Now, having seized the forts across the mountains, thine victory-laden armies repulsed them and we, the virtuously-appointed Satrap Protector sent for the commanders of parayuritis, the fortress-commanders and the generals and entreated them in accordance with the verse 'Behold! Upon the horizon is truce!' to not do violence upon the sedition-mongering Yalapas, and they swiftly entreated us underneath thine shadow to make peace with thine world-governing Sublime Presence once more.

-Third letter of Satrap Protector Cathak Zamati of the Imperial Protectorate to Pacify the West in the Realm Year 767, following increased Yalpageshi probing expeditions across the mountains.​

Laughing Dancer's face is close enough that you can smell her perfumed breath, her hands cupping your face so you can feel her knife-sharp nails prick against the back of your head and see yourself reflected in her eyes, that at this distance seem more like two balls of fire suspended in a black void. As she listens to your explanation, you desperately grasp for some kind of emotion or reaction in them, but much like a little girl trying to retrieve her toy lost in a well, you cannot reach any deeper than the surface. Whichever thoughts she has remain unknown to you; lost in her eyes. And then she smiles, this time without her teeth.

"You know what, little princess? I can respect that. There's something respectable about declaring to someone who has you on your knees and is open about wanting to eat your heart that you carry on solely so you can get what's yours."

You open your mouth to complain that that's not actually what you said and also you're on your knees because of those roots, not out of any desire to be kneeling, but a single clawed finger over your lips quickly robs you of the opportunity.

"You don't want to say something stupid now, little princess, do you, hmm?" You wisely decide to follow her advice.

"It's almost tragic in a way," she begins with a dramatic sigh, "that all these desires of yours are going to end in nothing. You know, what with Yalpagesh and all the schemes. But on the bright side, when your Shogunate is dead and buried, or your courtiers have all killed themselves off with their schemes and backstabs, there won't be any reason for me to eat your heart at all anymore." Her tone is the kind of sickeningly sweet sympathy that doesn't even pretend to hide the mockery.

"And you can even come live with me. I'm sure an evil soul-eating demon like me can find lots of things to use an adorable exiled princess like you for." She smiles widely with her teeth, a habit you are already close to finding tiresome if the sharp teeth didn't make it so terrifying. So terrifying, and so infuriating.

There is something about her bearing that makes it absolutely impossible for you to resist getting angry. Perhaps it is the way she condescendingly looks down at you or the way she mockingly feigns sympathy or the way she smirks at you like she already knows everything - actually just everything about her bearing now that you think of it - but whatever it is, it's definitely working. She has just the right kind of smug smile and says just the wrong things. You don't mind the humiliation of being forced to kneel before her, or the indignity of her using that slurred Eastern District accent rather than court speech, you mind how she rubs everything in, like she's just doing this to see you squirm under her. As if she has nothing better to do with her time. As if she's just bored and happened to catch you by accident and decided that was a good way to spend her day. So far, you have done your best to not give her the satisfaction of seeing you angry, but you're not sure if you can keep that up.

And you are very sure that she knows that as well.

"Just think! An exiled princess living in the forest as a maidservant to a soul-eating demon! Why, it's almost out of epic. Then maybe a Yalpageshig prince will defeat me and take you for wife before founding a new dynasty and claiming the continuation of the Shogunate." She almost muses that last part, as if she's more considering the scenario than really trying to taunt you anymore.

"Though then again, that's probably going to happen when your Shogunate falls anyways." And there the knife is back in your chest.

You open your mouth to reply. To challenge her, to say anything. But no words come out of your mouth, and she doesn't give you the opportunity, condescendingly shushing you with her finger again.

"Because at the end of the day, you're here because you're powerless, right?"

The words hit you harder than a spear through your stomach.

"You're here because you can't stop me. Your mother, she could tear her legs free with a small exertion and then grab the tiger by its throat like out of an epic or poetry. She could drag me around and fight-" You can feel small tears forming in your eyes while she speaks, barely able to pay attention anymore. You won't give her the satisfaction of seeing you cry like a child.

"Your great ancestors, they cleared the land and built you an empire. And your ancestors, they subjugated all the world and made its court their jewel. And your nearer ancestors, they fought the Realm with tooth and claw. Even your mother fought her fair share of wars and triumphed over foes near and far. And you, my little princess, you don't know what you're gonna do with your little empire of one city far too small and far too weak. So you dream of your distant ancestors, and wish your court was on horseback, not in a throne room. Isn't that right?" You clench your fists, knowing full well that if you dare open your mouth, it is not words but wails that will escape. The full weight of her words hit you like a monstrous beast. You can feel the tears and anger welling up; an ugly and unshapely lump of inchoate misery within your throat. Gagging you. Drowning you.

"W-what the h-hell do you think you know about me?" You manage to stammer out, the words toxic on your tongue like withering acid. The stammer only feeds the lump within your throat. The return of that ugly habit of speed from your miserable childhood is enough to make one of your nails penetrate the skin of your balled-up fists. You cannot see it, but you can feel the warmth spreading as you draw a tiny drop of red blood against your bleached skin. Underneath the leaden paint, your knuckles turn white.

"Oh, I definitely know enough to see I've struck a chord." She almost laughs as she says that.

"I know why you're so angry. So angry and so sad. It's very simple." Her face is a smug and cruel smile. You understand why she smiles with her teeth so often. She's as much a predator in her human shape as she is in the tiger's skin.

"You're angry because you're jealous." Your heart seizes up and the forest becomes silent.

"You're jealous because you're not your mother, not your ancestors." You can hear your blood flowing like a river in your ears.

"Jealous because you're not me." Something inside you snaps.

With a movement like lightning, you pull back your arm and strike her. Before she can react, your fingernails have found a home in the soft skin of her neck, digging into flesh and tightening around her throat and windpipe. You are ready to die. All form and skill has left your body, the thousands of hours spent practicing and training banished from your mind. In front of you, a pair of black voids suspended in balls of fire stare into your eyes, your delicate bone-white hands compressing around the bronze of her neck. You can absentmindedly feel the dull pain of your right palm where your nails drew blood against her skin. You blink once or twice to remove the tears from your eyes, your face a beastly snarl of rage. When you feel her resist, you grip even tighter, trying to pull her closer to yourself. The tug-of-war between you is brief. Brutal. You cannot hear the forest around you. A river of rage flows in your ears, and if she were to gasp for air, you would not be able to even register it.

And then she grabs your wrists, a faint silver glow enveloping you both as a little moon appears on her brow, shining brighter than any crown. Pulling your arms from her throat with unnatural strength, the moon on her brow changes its phases erratically; full in a second and half in the next. She crosses her other set of arms, which she seems to have dependent on whether she feels like it at the moment or not, over her chest as she looks at you with a stone cold gaze.

"You know. I was asking myself if I should spare you or not, or what I should do about you. Admittedly, all those considerations were before you tried to murder me." She smiles a wide, humorless and teeth-showing smile.

The anger is still rushing through you, that sweet and intoxicating alcohol of fury, and you respond by spitting her in the face. Something made less impactful by the speed with which she moves a third arm up to block the glob of spit and flick it away. With a fourth hand, she brings her fingers to your throat, almost playfully caressing you, running her clawed fingers up your chin without drawing blood. You can hear your heartbeat as her fingers run against your skin and briefly feel it stop when they settle on your chin.

"You know, I think it would be a shame for you to die here. You're so adorable when you're angry. Just the cutest little princess." She pats your cheek as if to pet you, then lets your arms free, and you topple to the ground, the power given to you by the anger fading away like sails without wind.

Deflated, you weakly look up at her, suddenly realizing how exhausted you are. You suppose that balancing on the knife's edge of death in front of a heart-eating moon demon does that to people, a part of you drily suggests.

"We can't have you tattling to everyone about me though, and it would be such a shame if you were to return empty-handed. All the explanations they would demand. Ugh, it would be so tiresome to listen to." She's barely even paying attention to you, choosing rather to pace about the clearing, as if considering her options before settling in place with a smile.

"Oh, I know just the trick." She suddenly lights up, stretching out her arm and closing her eyes, letting a mosquito land on it while she concentrates. The bright moon on her forehead shines even brighter as her entire body is bathed in a silver light and you watch in a mix of amazement and horror as the mosquito grows and changes shape; legs growing together and eyes disappearing into one another until a full-grown tiger much like the shape she took stands right before you.

"You know what to do, little princess." She smiles cruelly as she simply grabs the tiger, encircling both its forelegs with her arms and pinning it into place with the unnatural strength of the Anathema, its belly open to attack as the newly-created beast roars in fury and confusion.

You wonder if behind those feline eyes, a mosquito's multifaceted eyes stare out in bewilderment, not understanding the sensation of warm fur that covers its body, ignorant to the beating of its great heart pumping blood through its new veins. The thought does not last long, for soon you are more occupied by the feeling of your bindings loosening and retreating once more into the earth below.

You rise, uncertain at first, as she winks at you and you draw your dagger from its sheath on your left. For a second, you consider instead to impale the blade within her neck, but it does not take long for you to conclude that a woman who grapples with tigers and calmly removes hands from her throat is probably not very amenable to being stabbed or likely to die from a neck wound. So you wince internally, decide to be a good girl and do what she says and curse the cruel fate that led you here. You approach the tiger, raise the dagger high and thrust it in, the glory of such a close kill long gone though you're not sure if the fact that a moon-demon aided you or the tiger's effective incapacitation contributes more to its inauspicious nature. Pulling the dagger down the tiger's belly, you split it open and slit its throat, making sure to give the beast a swift death as you watch the last life ebb out of its body.

This had been a tiger for no more than a minute.

You stare down at the unmoving animal, not feeling particularly proud of yourself or princely for killing it. When you look up at Laughing Dancer again, she wears a new body; her tattoos and tiger eyes gone and replaced with darker skin and a pair of light blue eyes. You feel nauseous looking at it, knowing well the stories of how she would have acquired that shape and what she had intended to do to you. You look away, choosing to remain silent. The stench of the dead tiger fills your nose and you let out a silent, internal prayer to holy Hesiesh, begging for his resolve and serenity of mind. You recall the tale of Hesiesh subsisting in his cave on water droplets and stray wisps of grain, reminding yourself of the thousand demons that came to tempt him, scare him or otherwise turn him from virtue, all of which he rebuked. You turn to face her again and speak.

"Why have you stolen this body, Anathema?" Your voice is as cold as you can make it, monotonous more out of need than anything else.

"Well, there are really many reasons I decided to eat this particular morsel, though her form was given willingly. If you think me a cannibal I must sorely disappoint you, for the woman you see in front of you is named Two Brown High Peak, and her form was promised to me in return for her escape from the village into distant lands. In return for her name and memories, I gave her the form of a bird to use as she saw fit for a week, and she is now long away from the inherited debts on her family and the crushing taxes laid by your Shogunate that caused her to fall into destitution." The words hit as hard as punches. You open your mouth to object, to excuse yourself, to accuse her of lying but she beats you to it.

"In any case, why I chose this form specifically is because her village currently believes she was eaten by the tiger you were here to hunt in return, and I want you to return with me in her shape and use some of that princely charity of yours to cancel the debts and take her with you to be your retainer at the palace. And then you're going to devote that tiger of yours as a sacrifice to the local divinities and the divine Elders of this region. If you're gonna have to cling to this doomed state, I can at least make sure you're remembered as a good princess before the Yalpageshig conquer it all and kill you or take you away to be a court ornament… or I decide on something to do with you." She seems thoughtful on the last part.

"How are you to know I will not simply alert the rest of the court and have you killed?" You ask, trying to make yourself sound confident and impressive.

"Because I can sense you won't." She pauses for a second before continuing "And because if you do I will be gone in a few minutes and make you regret every remaining heartbeat of your life with fury." You believe her threat wholeheartedly.

"If I let you with me, I would let the Shogunate's greatest threat right into its very heart. You would eat that like you would have my own." Your voice is surprisingly stable.

"An impressive piece of metaphor, but I suppose I'll give you my promise of that much. I won't do anything to any of the members of your court. I suppose if it may please her divine Highness, you can consider me your guest." She says that last part with no small measure of sarcasm. For a moment, it strikes you that if this woman were not at heart a demon, you might have been friends. Her sense of humor reminds you of Wave. You flinch internally.

"Fine. Come with me then. Whether triumphant or unsuccessful, come with me to the Shogunate. It's not like I have any choice in whether you follow me or not."

"Correct!" She's all smiles again. "You don't! Don't worry, I'll do my very best to play your peasant and carry the tiger for you." Though her toothy smile this time is without the fangs, there is nonetheless a sense of dread to the expression.

Just the two of you, you return through the forest, letting Dancer-Peak be your guide. Carrying the bleeding tiger's corpse over her shoulder with no particular effort, she leads the way through paths that seem eminently familiar to her while talking at you about all sorts of subjects from the mundane to the disturbing, not particularly caring about your participation in the conversation. As soon as you come within range of the distant voices of a search party, her chipper manner suddenly changes completely. In the light of the afternoon sun, you see her bag slouch, her arms adjust to seem tired and exhausted, her entire posture modifies itself to seem submissive and weary. You hate to admit it, but that she could accomplish such a thorough transformation by only changing how she stands is more than a little impressive. You signal to the search party, calling over the few soldiers and their retinue of beaters and give them the narrative you and Dancer agreed on. You got isolated, your horse tripped and broke its neck while you survived, you fought the tiger in single combat and managed to eke out a win with the chance arrival of High Peak who had managed to hide in the forest but got lost and then make your way back. The entire story seems so full of holes to you, and you half-expect them to stop you at any minute and call your obvious bluff, but instead they merely thank the dragons for the return of the Shogunal heir and you make your way to the camp as the soldiers begin organizing beaters and villager couriers to alert everyone of your return.

When you are reunited with Song, your hunting party has set up a camp of their own, resting some miles outside Khwartanah. Resting as you recuperate from the day's events, you tell her the story of how you chased the tiger and eventually killed it with Peak's assistance. From her reactions, her raised eyebrows and unemotive demeanor, you are not entirely sure if she believes you but that at least won't matter too much. It is not the first time you or Song have lied to each other, and she knows you well enough to avoid prying into your affairs. Unless she judges it to your best interest, that is. It is not the first time, but you can still feel a pang of guilt. You are after all letting a heart-eating demon into the court of the Shogunate, and no amount of promises is going to plaster over that fact. Despite the fact that you suspect she doesn't entirely believe you, you nonetheless make your way back to Khwartanah and present the villagers with the now dead and speared decoy tiger and declare your intentions.

As you were made to promise, you sacrifice the tiger to the local god Mehan, revered in Khwartanah as having founded the village, in the name of the divine elders Surat and Thirteen Silver Phosphorescent Glory. They had been lovers and led a rebellion against the Shogunate before the capital was moved westwards, having both been known for their supreme grasp of Immaculate Law. When the corrupt Shogun could not defeat them in battle, he came to them in person intending to entice them to a peace by which he could either corrupt them or slay them under promise of peace. Instead he came to see the evil of his ways and restored righteousness to the Terrestrial Shogunate.

You preside over the evening feast, chanting the prayers, the wishes for the continuation of the Shogunate and the common benefit of all its subjects as the inhabitants of Khwartanah feast themselves on the benefits of the hunt. Great cutlets and spears of skewered lamb are served, and to the sound of the songs and praises, you can almost forget the day's events. Something made harder by your gaze's tendency to come to rest on "High Peak"'s face while she laughs and celebrates with the villagers, who do not see Dancer underneath her familiar face. Her acting is superb. Every single gesture, every single little quirk of her face, her manner of speech; all of it is different. A part of you wonders if she gained more from High Peak than merely her face and also remembers her memories in place of her own. Does she then have the same feelings for these people, for Khwartanah, that High Peak had? Questions for another time, you suppose.

Despite its prestige and central place in the hunt, once the tiger has been skinned for its fur, the remainder that is not turned into reagents and ingredients in medicine has little more purpose than being fed to the dogs. The claws, eyes, tail and many bones are taken away, but the meat is a feast for the village dogs. As you watch the animals eat the former hunter, you can't help but muse on how the tiger hunt—one of the ultimate symbols of a Shogun's martial prowess—ended with a fake tiger consumed by one of the lowliest of animals in the Perfected Hierarchy with less ceremony than you eating your own plate. If you were an astrologer or diviner, it would be hard to find such omens auspicious. Though you suppose that you aren't really a diviner or astrologer anyways, so perhaps one who is might say differently.

You doubt that part.

With the celebrations ending late, you go to take your rest and sleep in the great tents your party has brought with it outside the village. You have an uneasy night, constantly turning in your sleep and seeing Dancer's face in every corner. Though you manage to sleep, it is an anxious, superficial slumber; twisting and turning you wake innumerable times and do not remember any dreams when you wake early the next morning. Perhaps that is for the best. You would prefer not to dream after a day like this. Mayhaps you simply never fell deep enough into sleep to dream of anything of note at all. Or maybe there is nothing to it and yours is simply a tired mind overthinking. You do have a tendency to do that when worried.

As morning dawns, you command your followers to pack up the tents and make ready for departure. Before you leave by early midday, you make sure to gather the inhabitants of Khwartanah in its central green. Flanked by heralds, you silently declare through Song as your Voice that any debts of its residents will be annulled by your decree and that the land-tax will be reassessed and then reduced to a more fitting and bearable amount. You make a mental note to inform the chancery in Keinginan-i-Gehan of your actions here later and leave as soon as you are sure that most of Khwartanah is informed of your decision.

By the overjoyed reactions of the villagers, it strikes you that cases like High Peak might be more morbidly common than you suspected; a hopeless flight into forests and hills where men and women render themselves nontaxable just to escape the debts and taxmen. How common has this become? How many other villages does this affect? How much must they pay the soldiers now far into Yalpagesh? These are all thoughts that plague you from your place in the center of the column towards home and Keinginan-i-Gehan. Not much happens on the way home, as it did on the way to Khwartanah. The road is fairly well maintained, though here and there, the bricks have been replaced with packed earth maintained by village labor gangs.

That is, not much happens until the evening of the second day.

When you are only two days from home, the column stops in the middle of the road, a messenger running down to inform you only half a minute later of the cause of the stop. On the distant horizon, perhaps a few miles away, the tell-tale smoky signs of campfires snake their way into the sky. You can feel your heart stop in your breast as a terrible premonition comes over you. From the east and this close to Keinginan-i-Gehan, there are only two things so many campfires could mean. Either the army is returning from a victorious campaign in Yalpagesh, or you have just lost the war. Unfortunately, as heir to the Shogunate, things like this are exactly the sort of things that you are expected to deal with, and you gulp as you give the order to rearrange the column until you are at its head with a hefty guard. Sword at your right side casts a concerned gaze in your direction. Though she is Dragon-Blooded unlike you, she is far from enough to protect you in case it turns out to be the Yalpageshig and they are unwilling to negotiate. You ensure a heavy guard of forty—the majority of the sixty soldiers in the column—are by your side at the front, and to be entirely sure take "High Peak" with you. You don't particularly trust her, but if you get attacked, at least she will want to defend herself too. It's not the best of safety measures, but it's something.

And with those miserable preparations done, you set out to meet the army and hope to all the Dragons, the divine Elders and the innumerable divinities and dead of all Creation that it is merely the prajuritkhwaday returning home.

After little more than an hour of walking, you can feel your spirit sinking. Red banners, depicting the empty silhouettes of white jians splitting scissor-like in the middle and pentacles shining above them on a red field, flutter in the wind from every corner, every tentpole. Lesser banners of sunbursts crowned with crescents, elephants rampant with swords for tusks, boars crowned with golden suns and hundreds of others make for their companionship, dancing to the wind's melody. Here and there, your eyes spot a Shogunal banner, quickly identifiable for the blue borders that hem them in and the little azure monkey in the upper right corner. You would guess that there are all in all about forty or fifty odd banners, including many more which you cannot see. Circling the tents and the camp as a whole, thick walls of sharpened boles rise into the air and dissuade any attempts at assault. Smoke circles towards the sky, innumerable counters marking undeniably to the world—to the Shogunate—that the Sublime Semerwi State of Yalpagesh is here.

Ah, to be brittle glass, to shatter on impact. Merciful Dragons, spare us humans from such resilience!

A tear falls down your cheek, but there is no weeping.

A breath catches in your throat, but there is no wailing.

Ah, to only be glass.

You are paralyzed, struck by some sublime sensation of certainty, the weight of inevitability pulling down your shoulders. Compared to the inexorable majesty of ordained fate, what are the thrones of mortals? Where are the swords of heroes? You dare not look to your side, to see Dancer smiling at you through those stolen eyes, the kind lie of their expression not serving to hide the mockery beneath. You dare not look to your side, to see Sword's attempt to look calm, her adopted stoic mask of contemplation which you know well to hide the fears and fury boiling beneath. You dare not, and yet you see both. You should have listened to your hesitation.

You realize that you hear weeping. Weeping and silence.

The next realization is that you are responsible.

There is only one to lead them, only one to take responsibility, only one to take care of them, to see them defended and safe. And though you are surrounded by courtiers and supporters you feel so very lonely. But you grit your teeth, and force back the tears you wish to shed and tell yourself that should you die here, at least you may die the very ideal of a Shogunal heir before you get the chance to fail your empire upon its throne. You draw your sword and raise your voice, your voice breaking almost imperceptibly upon the first syllable like a wave against the odorous river deltas of Ta Vuzi as you ride forward and turn to face the throng.

You desperately try to think up a speech in the few heartbeats you have before you face them and must face just as you turn to the gathering that despite your mastery of all four high poetic styles, you do not have anything further than the opening access. What can one say in such a situation as this? No one prepared you for making what may be your very last address.

"Alert them to our coming, thou trumpeteers and musicians! They hath surely seen us already, give them a diplomatic salute! Thou cooks and hunters, prepare thee the surplus bounty of our hunt and set up camp! Not for the residents of the city but the Mirza of Yalpagesh, are they gifts now!" The court language feels awkward and clunky in your mouth, but the tell-tale rhythm of high speech nonetheless sings easily from your tongue.

You turn back towards the camp and ride forward alone, letting your own impromptu camp remain behind you as your eyes pass over the fluttering horsehair crests and red banners of the Yalpageshig encampment. You stop little more than perhaps a hundred paces by horse from the entrance, unfastening your sheath in entirety from your girdle and holding it in front of you in the Yalpageshig manner to signify peace between two equal lords. You hope that the fact that such a gesture is meant for two equal percüd lords for the Mirza to arbitrate between is not lost on whoever now claims the Four Black Banners of Yalpagesh. You wait there for a minute, and you see soldiers—in their colorful coats and heavy chain—gazing at you with curiosity. Though they do not know you, you can tell by their eyes that they recognize the sight of Shogunal majesty. You wait for more minutes, and you can feel your arm become tired. You start to wonder if this would-be Mirza is playing with you, or perhaps aiming to make you signal submission by letting the sheath and sword fall before even taking the chance to meet you. Your mind falls to what happened to prajuritkhwaday Cutting Voice. You suppose it doesn't really matter when the Mirza is here now. She could have thrown herself in the sea for all the impact she can make now.

Finally, your own diplomatic salute is answered with a customary annunciatory salute from the encampment, and the face of who you are to call Mirza becomes known to you.

Entering at the head of a two file wide column of soldiers, the first thing that strikes you about the Mirza is the force by which he already dominates your sight. Both lean and muscular, his tanned copper skin casts a contrast to the scarlet royal robe of a Yalpageshig sovereign, and the kidaris he wears on his head easily attracts your gaze to his face. With a sizable black beard on his chin, immaculately groomed and braided and his kohl-lined eyes, he casts a heroic sight like out of Yalpageshig frontier epics. On his robes and around his neck, hand-shaped chashmak amulets clatter, their wind-chime fingers moving in a subtle rhythm to the breeze and the gait of his horse. His painted black eyebrows, the same color as his hair and beard, only make his clear and ice-blue eyes all the more piercing; a stare like a spear. A few scars line his right cheek, looking much like they are no less than a few weeks or perhaps months old. For his part, he definitely looks the part of a man who has been leading an army for months on end with little end in sight, the thick scarlet shawl that frames his powerful shoulders doing little to conceal any of his muscles. A warrior-Mirza, this one. You muse to yourself, and try to pretend you aren't looking a few extra times at his chest.

You notice that his skin is subtly oiled—at least his hands and face—and catch yourself wondering how much of the rest of his body that applies to. You mentally give that part of yourself a smack. Yalpageshig princes oil their hands and face for diplomatic meetings. Oiling the body would be stupid.

And also you are here to negotiate for a dying state, not to negotiate a marriage. Not that you even know him.

"Great protectors are the Five Dragons, who govern this earth, who protect our Immaculacy, who protect man, who provide salvation for man, who made me Shogun, one king of many, one lord of many."

You barely manage to suppress your gasp at his Shogunal proclamation, doing your best to focus on his voice instead. Melodic and baritone, it is a perfect voice to command armies. You can feel yourself listening intently, even as he gives just the customary introduction of a Yalpageshig Mirza.

"I am Ruling-Exalted-like-a-Sovereign, the Great Shogun, Shogun of Shoguns, Shogun of the Nations of the Terrestrial Shogunate containing many kinds of men, Shogun of this Shogunate far and wide, son of Mirza Governing-Truthlike-as-Holy-Hesiesh, a Semerwi."

He does not wait for you to introduce yourself.

"And thou art Eight Vermilion Holiest Gift of the Five Days of Mela—holiest of holies her name the Accordant to the Call of Battle—thy beauty the edgeshine of a knife, thou bright star of the city of cities. Of thy coming I was aware, for the Dragons Fivefold and Immaculate have unto me a dreamlike portent sent. My brother, who sacrificed himself upon my spear truly did not speak kindly enough of thy radiance. Thou Shogunal moon-faced beauty with the stature of the swaying cypress and the eyes of shining jewels, I bid thee lower thy sheath and speak freely!"

It did not even strike you to think of it, but his court speech is perfect. You did not even notice the rhythmic and melodic tenor of his voice, but once you think of it, it is hard to stop thinking about. He is speaking in poetry, Third High Form. The praise is nothing you haven't heard before, but the stress of the situation must be doing something. You can feel that you have to stop yourself from stammering your response, something that would humiliate you utterly.

"Thou sovereign Mirza of Yalpagesh, my name and throne is known to thee, yet you saw not fit to mention my titles thousand, nor my acclamations three? By the notables and dignitaries of the world-governing Terrestrial Shogunate am I destined Shogun-Banu, not a cypress to be admired, nor pearl to be collected." Your voice is hard and cold, equal parts to stop yourself from stammering from the stress and to match his unrevealing face of stone.
"By the dignitaries and notables of thy city art thou Shogun, thou moon-faced cypress, but thy mother's spear-forest I have felled, and her blood-gardener I have dismissed. Thou star of glory, thou art not Shogun nor her heir, for ye fallen all within my sovereignty."

You can feel your heart seize in your throat. Not for a thousand years has the Shogunal title been contested in such a fashion without even an acclamation.

Before you speak, he recites a poem.

Waxing moon,
thou heavenly star,
thy hand reaches heaven,
but thy floor is me,
my moon.

The meaning is clear and all too painfully understandable. You cannot deny him that. With no army, nor the immediate favor of the divine Elders, the Dragons and the divinities, there is little you can do to resist him. Though your hand reaches towards the heavenly Shogunal title, it is entirely contingent on him permitting it. You realize that this would be the case no matter what terms you agree to. In any case, your right to bear the title would be entirely dependent on Ruling-Exalted-like-a-Sovereign deciding you should have it. You feel like stomping on the ground in frustration. The entire garrison of the city spent but a few hundred men, cast away in a lost war. You are Shoguns no longer.

And you would never be.

The realization strikes you like a thunderbolt, at once horrifying and liberating. Before you can continue your train of thoughts, he continues.

"Spare thee thine gifts for us, bring thee thine hunts and bounties to the residents of thine city. Bring thee them the news, that a new Shogun shall sanctify her holy office, thou ornament of the world. Or join thee my court, thou lady of fineries. Bury not thyself with thine ill-read mother! Thine tresses lasso-like, thine skin the finest ivory, soulful brightest star of all heaven, thine scholarship is famed so that souls whose eyes you entrap say 'she is not of this earth', why would you have me deprive Creation of such a radiance?"

"Such is my duty, for to the Shogunate do I belong as much as the lowest slave." You immediately answer without even thinking about it.

His face betrays the first emotion so far, as he narrows his eyes and nods affirmatively.

"If thou belongeth to the Shogunate as you say, then thou art mine belonging as my blade, my banner and my horse, and the choice lieth in mine hand, thou defiant cypress."

"Then take thee the choice in thine hand, thou hath neither acclamation nor Dais to call thine own." You answer coldly.

"And take it I shall. Mark thee mine word: Whether thine city bows of her own accord, or I bend her by mine hand, thou shalt be my price, thou moon-faced carnelian."

"Then take thee thine price, when thou hast her."

He smiles coldly and merely remains silent. Only in the silence do you remember that you are still holding up the sheath, having not obeyed his request to lower it. Your arm hurts from the tiredness, but you keep it up yet more and look into his eyes, using all your training to feign the cool effortlessness of a Shogunal court lady.

Just look like Wave would look, you tell yourself.

Shining jewel,
glittering for all.
The hand that grasps,
smothers light and the luster

You pause the poem, taking a pause to leave a breathless caesura until you notice the microfine annoyed movements of his brow and you can feel him catch his breath on the waiting.

is lost.

You finish the composition, taking great satisfaction in the annoyed furrowing of his brow at the poem. It is not a particularly deep or complex poem, but the meaning comes clear across; whether the Shogunate or yourself, he cannot lay his hand on it without changing his prize irrevocably.

"Name thee then thy terms, thou clever jewel." He is curt and to the point.

Article:

[ ] Your City - Ruling-Exalted-as-a-Sovereign will spare Keinginan-i-Gehan, promising to restrict his soldiers from sacking or looting as much as possible, restraining civilian casualties as is within his ability. This will not guarantee a peaceful siege, or that he will not kill any who resist. He will still seek to take the city through whatever means possible, he will just avoid doing damage to it.

[ ] Your Friends - Ruling-Exalted-as-a-Sovereign will spare your friends, whoever they may, as long as he has their names. He will do as much as possible to ensure that as long as they are within his power, they will not be harmed, nor will his soldiers kill them by accident. If they resist rather than surrender, he will seek to capture them rather than kill them, and he will aim to set them free if he successfully captures the city.

[ ] Your Family - Ruling-Exalted-as-a-Sovereign will spare your family, extending to your mother and many other courtiers. He will not be able to take into account if they decide to resist until the end of their lives, but will attempt to spare them as much as possible. He is also incapable of permitting them to live within his realm if he successfully conquers the Shogunate. He is willing to make an exception for you, but not for more.

You have gained a Minor Tie: Ruling-Exalted-like-a-Sovereign (Fearful Infatuation)

You spend the next hour negotiating and laying terms to each other, from horseback to horseback, in the fashion of the Yalpageshig where all treaties are made in the saddle. When you have given your demands and he has accepted, you bid each other farewell and you make your way back to the camp to inform them of the negotiations. There is silence among them as you lay out the meager terms you managed to negotiate, the intentions of the Mirza to lay siege to Keinginan-i-Gehan, his claiming of the Shogunal title and the amount of troops that you saw. You can all but hear the unsaid lamentations, silenced more by the shock of the war's change of favor than by any conscious attempt to hold back the terror and fear. As you speak, you lock eyes with Song, less out of a conscious effort and more of an attempt to look anywhere but at Dancer's face. You know what she will look like, how she will smile without smiling. You feel less like yourself and more like an observer, clenching your fist and letting the sound of the afternoon cicadas wash over you. You whisper to yourself and repeat the poem you composed for Wave and Song so many months ago.

Great ancestors
All great warriors
Ten-thousand great dragons gone
Spent before my time came
What for?

Oh, to be glass. Oh, to be shattered upon impact, spared such merciless resilience.

You give the order to turn and make way towards home, and slowly but surely the column reforms to make its way homewards with a slow and regretful gait. Here and there, there are a few futile attempts to restart conversation, to bring back the whispers and laughter that ruled the day just earlier, but they are stillborn every one. The column remains ruled by awkward silence, coughs and half-hearted attempts breaking the silence now and then, all the way to the gates of the city.

In Keinginan-i-Gehan you do your business methodically, dispensing your remaining leftover bounty from the hunt to soup kitchens for the poor, established in your name and in the name of the Shogunate. You barely remember the words of the pronunciation you make before the emergency court, only the cold cadence with which you deliver it. Perhaps the shock had yet to wear off, or perhaps the emotionless dignity of the chief heir is familiar enough to insulate you. Regardless, you leave the court earlier than protocol dictates, taking the chance to collapse in your chambers, drowning yourself in the usually-calming waves of slumber. But there is no calm night of sleep for you this night. You twist and turn in your slumber, mumbling and fumbling in the darkness, stumbling from one dream into the next half-formed mirage. As if struck by fever, you are less buoyed by the gentle waves of sleep than tossed about by a raging sea, a puppet or plaything of the rampant tides of your own mind.

In one instance, you are wandering by a lonely road, wearing all your fineries and riches. Yet no one passes you even the slightest glance, and the gates to the city are closed and barred from you. When you open your mouth to call upon the gates to open, they fade into the horizon, the road extending further and further into the distance. A dog walking on its hind legs, wearing a purple shawl comes passing by you, laughing at your predicament. The dog offers you a pomegranate, its tongue lolling about from its open, salivating mouth and you cast the fruit aside. Maggots crawl from the holed-out chambers as it splatters against the ground, slowly filling the road while the dog laughs at you and you fall into the writhing mass.

You wake for the first time.

In another instance, you are a fruit in a garden. The red sunset illuminates all the trees and plants, casting the entire garden in its scarlet glow. From a tall and swaying cypress, you wobble in the wind, peaceful and undisturbed. Blue-furred monkeys swing in the branches and crawl about on the ground. Nightingale-song fills the garden. A man splits you from the tree, his scissors separating you from your arboreal home as he cuts down the wind-swaying cypress, rooting up the stump and chasing about the monkeys. In one hand, he palms you and with another, he palms the evening sun, crowning himself with its fiery light. He plants a new tree, greater and stronger, letting it grow and grow until all the garden is beneath a sea of darkness. Seating himself at the top of its branches, he lets the garden die and monkeys cower in the shade.

You wake for the second time. And you will wake a hundred times more.

Only early in the morning do you resolve to not attempt the trap of sleep one more time, dress yourself and gaze at the city outside. The weather that rules the skies reflects your mood perfectly, calling to mind the events of the previous days; Dancer, Yalpagesh, the possible doom of the Shogunate. You clench your fists and fix your stare at the heavens, remaining silent rather than offering a prayer as you commonly would. As you prepare a cup of wine, you briefly see the face of the Shogun-Mirza staring back at you, his mouth a satisfied, possessive smile and his eyes a pair of suns. You feel your fingers tighten around the goblet, gritting your teeth as you mutter a curse.

Oh, to be glass that shatters.

Article:

[ ] The Weather is Stormy - Outside, the heavens are in uproar; a storm rules the skies and lightning splits the clouds. The weather is, much like your insides, in irreconcilable rage. Storming and thundering, you feel like casting rage in all directions. (This is a personality vote. Holiest Gift will be furious at Yalpagesh.)

[ ] The Weather is Rainy - Outside, the heavens are weeping; rains fall with no end and puddles fill on the earth. The weather is, much like your insides, in a state of abject misery. Lavishing a deluge upon the earth below, you feel like weeping and sobbing. (This is a personality vote. Holiest Gift will be depressed over the Shogunate.)

 

[Chehrazad]

Much like the Great Western Shogunate, this quest is by no means dead. We're back baby.

The Red Apple

Spoiler: Winning Votes

[X] The Weather is Stormy
[X] Your City

Situated on the Nezremand Peninsula, the city of Keinginan-i-Gehan overlooks the calm sea formed between the Grand Hook Peninsula and the Shogunal Isles, sometimes simply the Islands. Its dependents, the townships of Abad-i-Khwarra and Bandar-i-Showgun, and the island of Greater Yeziret are all remnants of the vast empire that once permitted it to monopolize this trade completely. Those days, of course, are long gone and a Saatan quarter where the mercantile residents of that far-off trading city now reside near the harbor and within the city walls now overlooks your sea as well. Far north of the city, the great mountains divide the Grand Hook in two from the east to the west, between your side and that which the Realm now occupies with its so-called Protectorate to Pacify the West, but closer to you, the north belongs to Yalpagesh. For though you speak of the Yalpageshig as strangers from the east, in truth your city has become an enclave, surrounded on all sides but the sea itself, by the sovereignty of the Mirza of Yalpagesh. And the Karvand river which once formed your boundary with Yalpagesh lies now closer to the middle of that rising state than it is to your own city.

You have thought about this geography many times when you stare out at the foothills of the north from your solitary position on the walls of the world's center, or when you gaze upon the sea that was once called Your Sea. You wish you were still out there, gazing upon the fields and rolling hills.

But you are here instead.

Approximately two frasukhs north from Keinginan-i-Gehan, you stand in the middle of a pavilion. Lions and dragons of gold whirl about the red pillars of sandstone, carrying the circular roof that, umbrella-like, wards off the sun bearing down upon you. Surrounded by soldiers and notables, the heavy court robe of brocade wraps around you snugly, its touch against your skin and its weight against your muscles more like armor than cloth.

About the imperial shade of the pavilion, rugs and carpets are strewn about, the chirping of birds and the pleasant glare of the midday sun casting light upon the day. Despite the nearness of Wave and Song, and the lively assembly that surrounds the pavilion while you go through the ritual, the wonderful day means little to your gloomy mood.

Standards and pennants waft lazily in the breeze, breaking up the sameness of the large crowd surrounding the pavilion. Despite the distance from the City, a large crowd of onlookers has gathered to watch the ceremony; carpenters, artisans, beggars and many more alike have assembled, pushing and jumping to catch a glimpse of your face. A bitter smile touches the face you wear in your mind, and not the dignified face you wear on your body; to every girl of the City, being in your position right now is an impossible dream.

After all, it is not every day that one stands to receive an acclamation from the City that some call Half-the-World.

Standing still, you hear the jingle of gold and the rattle of scales behind you; a man of the army. You close your eyes and grasp firmly the mace-like scepter in your left hand and put your right arm in prayer posture. You feel him brush aside your hair and place a collar of cold metal on your neck; the imperial torc that symbolizes the Shogun as a poor slave of the Immaculate Dragons.

"Armed for war, do the soldiers and military of the Terrestrial Shogunate, which maketh peace on earth in accordance with the laws of heaven and the Creation-Ruling Mandate of the heavenly Immaculate Dragons, receive thee; thou who art Shogun-Banu Eight Vermilion Holiest Gift of the Five Days of Mela, most gracious daughter of the Sublime Heavenly Shogun-Banu, Six Gold Gentle Palm, of the Five Days of Mela."

His voice is barely louder than speaking to you conversationally, but you know that by the winds of Mela, he has propelled it to all the listeners, and you know that your response will be likewise projected.

"I refuse thee. A Shogun, I am not. Art thou my subject, I command thee to cease this process!" The command comes out of your mouth, well-practiced and rehearsed. A little part of you almost hopes that he will acquiesce and simply let you go. But you know it doesn't work like that. And the reply only confirms your expectations.

"Thy servant am I, but the subject of only the Terrestrial Shogunate am I. Speak ye your will, ye soldiers of the Terrestrial Shogunate!" He commands, and the response is a deafening cry. "Worthy! Worthy! Worthy!" come the cries from soldiers and commoners alike. You bow your head, defeated, and smile. You don't mind playing this part of the ritual.

He steps aside and a figure, whom you know to be Mother from the sound of her gait against the marble beneath your feet, places a heavy mantle upon your shoulders. You cannot see it with your eyes clothed, but you know it well to be the topaz-and-purple-colored mantle of Shoguns.

Mother steps back from you, and you open your eyes as Wave steps up and leads you forwards, through the crowd which parts as the soldiers split it to make way for you. Despite the ceremony and grandeur, you cannot help but notice how few soldiers there are. You think bitterly to the fateful meeting with Ruling-Exalted-as-a-Sovereign. How many dead soldiers of the Shogunate had he been responsible for at that date?

Wave leads you to a white horse, saddled and ready for you. Lightly surrounded by a few soldiers, she helps you up and you seat yourself, sidesaddle, on the horse's back. Taking the reins, you set the horse into a walk, back the way you came, so the crowd can follow and the soldiers can form a column. The path goes towards the City.

The road too, is strewn with observers and people who have come to watch the acclamation and to gawk at you. It is rare for the Shogun - or co-Shogun in this case - to be so visible, and so vulnerable, and it is as if you are devoured in their eyes, which take in every aspect of your body, from your face to your clothes, to your bearing and the way you sit. You wish it was less hot. You wish that the Shogunal robes and mantle were less heavy. Or maybe, you just wish you were somewhere else. You reflect on that a bit. Maybe the people who come to see you are no different. You suppose that in your accession to the Shogunate, they can forget their troubles too.

The walls of Keinginan-i-Gehan are imposing in the distance. Menacing with towers and battlements and standing up to twenty meters tall at the most defended segments, brick, mortar and Shogunal concrete married into walls that even the Empress could not defeat without treachery. It is reassuring to look at the walls like this from the outside, you consider. Though you could swear - illogically of course - that the air smells of the wafting of smoke from the distant camp of the Yalpageshig, the ancient walls fill your heart with confidence. At the Shogunate's height, raising these walls almost bankrupted it. Ever since, they have faithfully protected the city.

The city-gate too is built to impress, dragons twirling and intertwining to the sides of the city-gates and divine Elders standing guard by its sides, their faces obscured so as not to offend their memory. Lions in stone and simhatas in marble kneel in supplication before the gate; relics of a richer, more prosperous Shogunate. Only half of the city is defended in this fashion; the districts south of the river are built outside the walls, though they are less densely populated these days, and many of the houses have been abandoned and turned to ruin.

You enter the gates on horseback, your reception being the thunder of great drums and the cutting cry of trumpets and horns. The roar of the music rises as you and your assembly pass through the gates and into the city, where crowds await, joining those who had waited outside the city to receive you. The sounds and the chaos are almost overpowering, a wave of the city's multitude slamming into you. If you were not so used to it, you might think that you could drown in it.

From the gates of the city, you make your way to the monastery of Sextes-Jylis-He-Hath-Increased-the-Eternal-Splendor. A small and ancient monastery, it stood here before the city did. Surrounded by buildings to accommodate the legal school and the thousands of pilgrims who now visit it annually, it is an otherwise small and unremarkable building in a four-arched chahar taq style, built where He Who Hath Strewn Much Grass once left his occultation to bring succor to victims of the Great Contagion. The smooth black stones of the monastery stand a testament to its miraculous nature, for no such stone can be found within hundreds of miles.

Here you knock on the gates as you did not many weeks ago when you knocked on the gates of the Sublime Tranquil Grave Temple. You announce that you are Shogun, that the people and notables of the world-governing Shogunate have placed in your hands the trusteeship of the Shogunate, and that you seek refuge with them. You announce that you desire not the responsibilities and pains of being guardian for such a responsibility. Take my name and throne, my titles thousand and my acclamations three, o monks, ye people of the Immaculate path!

A little part of you means it too.

And the monks play their part as well: The Shogunate cannot be thus donated, for in thou art Pasiap incarnate and thine titles thousand are worthless against such a soul. Thou canst not take refuge with us, for thou art Shogun and in thine holy shadow, all the peoples of the world take refuge. You confirm the rights and titles of the monastery, you praise them for keeping to the word of occulted Sextes Jylis and you make your way further into the city and further into the acclamation.

In a brief moment of privacy, you enter the Garden-Filled Palace by the North-Gate. Built close to the northern gate of the city, the palace is a small island of serenity. For a few moments, you are alone with only Song, who has to be there as your chosen warden.

"Are you healthy?" She asks, concerned in a non-courtly register. Unlike you, she never spoke courtly as her native language.

"I will survive." You state matter-of-factly, not feeling particularly capable of surviving.

She makes a few affirmative noises that indicate her total lack of belief in your ability to survive without her, and you close your eyes tiredly while you change costume into something less heavy and cumbersome than the court robe and mantle. It's not that you feel uncomfortable around so many people⁠—though you do⁠—but that the weight of their expectations and hopeful gazes is so much. You wish the world was different.

In your lighter cavalry jacket and your baggy anaxyrides pants, you walk about the palace. You meet with the staff, greet them and they inform you of their functions which you already knew and which they were already aware you knew. You survey its rooms and hallways, and you enjoy the time you have for yourself. You know it will not last, after all.

You leave the palace by chariot. Song takes the reins of the horses and drives the contraption while you stand straight-backed, your head wrapped in silken cloth to leave your face free. Escorting the slow-moving chariot dragged by trotting horses, riders in rich dress and armor flank you, as much to announce your presence as to keep away any who might wish to get close.

Riding eastwards, you arrive first at the Pasiap-He-Governeth-Both-Worlds Temple. Furnished and expanded by several Shoguns, it is an enormous building that dominates one's gaze with its enormous decorated dome and crenelated towers. Here, it is said, Pasiap performed his famous Lecture Against the Taxmen and humbled the Anathematic tax collectors. Built near the center of one of the city's three hills, three roads make their way to its entrances. At the temple, you join the service, making sure that your voice is heard in the chants, prostrating yourself before the icons of the Dragons, washing your face and hands and making your offerings.

Here you feel at home, though you wish that you could be anonymous; that you could be any other participant for the duration of the chants. At the homily, you once again make a show of offering your sovereignty and guardianship over the Shogunate to the Immaculacy, and once again you are rebuffed. It is in this fashion that you leave the temple after directing prayers towards the patron gods of Keinginan-i-Gehan, the Shogunate, and many more and make your way towards the Image-of-Creation Square and the end of the acclamation.

There are many other meetings and rituals on the way. And you are tired when you reach the Square and meet with the district heads and the gathered notables. Amidst the springs, trees, grassy plains and pavement, you receive their supplications, and their oaths. From the rare beaming smile of Wave to the guarded neutrality of the Voice, who now speaks for you as well, they all give you their deepest bows and oaths and swear to uphold the Shogunate. You muse how much it matters when Yalpagesh is not far outside the walls.

. . .
​

It is early night when you are done, and it is with great effort that you make your way inside the palace. Your body and mind alike are tired, and every movement feels like a crime against either.

"Mother."

You enter your mother's study, making a first rank bow in the doorway.

"Daughter." She acknowledges you, rising perfunctorily to perform a similar first rank bow.

She sits in her curule chair, the open window behind her giving you an open view of the gardens and trees of the Image-of-Creation square outside. The curtains hanging to the sides, still bound up with their ropes of silk, depict peacocks and other animals in filigree-gold. A curule chair has been placed ready for you to seat yourself in. You take a seat, sitting opposite Mother.

"Congratulations on thine acclamation, daughter. We are equals in the Shogunate now."

You let out a sigh, your mind and body tired.

Mother sighs as well. She sounds tired, resigned. It's only now you notice the bags under her bloodshot eyes, the slight forward listing of her head, her unfocused stare. You suppose that in the rituals of daylight, such things are forgotten.

"Thou hast not been sleeping much?" You instinctively switch back to court speech, your voice full of concern.

"Concern thee with thine own affairs, daughter. And I will concern myself with mine." She doesn't snap at you, but the rebuke stings enough to annoy you. Why does she have to be like this?

"Did thou not just say thyself that we were equals in the Shogunate? For what purpose was I acclaimed by the grandees and notables of the Exalted State and brought into the co-Shogunate only to be dismissed?" You do not manage a gentle rebuke. Your tone is audibly annoyed. An acclamation is work and you are very tired.

A servant enters through one of the secret doors, briefly interrupting the conversation to bring you food. Still-steaming rice, glistening dolmas, thick-sauced kuah beulangong and thick and fluffy naan. In accordance with tradition, you both eat quickly and in silence as soon as the servants have left. You are silently thankful that the food is plentiful. It takes time before you are ready to speak to one another again. The servants take the clean and finished plates away just as swiftly as they were delivered.

Mother sighs again, this time clearly of exhaustion. "No, I have not been sleeping much."

"Thou must not overtax yourself. Thou hast only one body, regardless of the blessing of the Dragons." You furrow your brow.

"If not so thou couldst rest, why else take the trouble of bringing me before the State to be raised to the Shogunate?" You try to insert some levity into your voice, but fail.

"Now, more so than ever, it is imperative that the people see the Exalted State in splendor. If the Shogun goeth unsleeping, it is a petty price to pay. Thine acclamation too, I urged on, so the people could see thee. In veiling themselves to the public, our ancestors were wise, for the sight of our faces bringeth hope like the sun."

You nod, understanding the calculation well. Nonetheless, you bite your lips and ask the question that is on your mind.

"Dost thou think this war could have been avoided? That this fate could have been held at bay?" Finally, in a closed room with her to ask the question.

Her expression doesn't change, and her eyes stare at the same nowhere-horizon. She doesn't even sigh or say anything.

"Couldst thou have silenced the Voice? Rebuked the Agha and offered the Mirza a trade?" You realize it sounds more like you're asking yourself these questions.

Finally she gives voice to a long-suffering sigh. You aren't stung. You can hear the tiredness breathe out from her lungs; little fragments of a soul stretched far too thin.

"Perhaps. Perhaps it could have been different. Let us say that I follow thine proposal, and I bring silence to the Voice and send the Agha to his father. Peace would have reigned, no doubt. The Mirza would doubtlessly have been emboldened by the Shogunate's concern for his interests. Certainly, he would have had cause to understand us as his servants and slaves as we have dutifully been for many years. Mayhaps he would have rewarded the Exalted State by opening his coffers for the restoration of temples and the renovation of the roads-" You cut her off to interject.

"But couldst thou not have held him hostage? Couldst thou not have offered to return him to Yalpagesh in return for a concession of our safety?" You burst out.

Mother smiles patiently, ignoring your faux pas and nods.

"Certainly. As the poet says in The Unfolding of Ten Thousand Scrolls or in the Righteous Inquiries, several Shoguns tried their luck at such a trick. Yet, such an action would also bring forth, to the masters of Yalpagesh, news of our disloyalty and our desire to see the ancient lands of our Exalted State returned."

"But those lands are ours." You insist. "We are not subjects of the Mirza of Yalpagesh, but Shoguns!"

She nods again. It strikes you that in the firelight, she seems very much the picture of someone her age, rather than the supernal youth with which the Exalted are endowed.

"But to the masters of Yalpagesh," she continues, "those lands were laid below their feet by the right of conquest, and our right to live by our own laws is a gift from their own generous hand to the foremost jewel in their necklace. And what Yalpagesh giveth, its masters could also take away with just as much effort."

"So let us set forth for the argument that I withheld the Agha in the captivity of our state, and that I offered to Yalpagesh to trade him. In return, the Mirza would grant our Shogunate the possession of a few islands, perhaps. Or he could march to the boundary-stones of our city and he could simply demand the Agha. Or he could use it as a cause to bring war to the walls. And we would be in captivity as we are now."

You furrow your brow.

"But did we not command the loyalty of more than two thousand soldiers? Did we not have their oaths and spears? Did they not scatter the Yalpageshig?"

"They did, and they died." Mother says frankly, sighing again. "Any blessing that we were afforded when our ancient land was returned to us through the march of our soldiers would not be present, for we would have neither the opportunity to act with surprise, nor the support of Agha Seizing-Prey-as-a-Falcon, nor would the cities of the Eastern District be emptied of soldiers as they were."

She pauses for a moment, as if to reflect.

"One supposeth that our Shogunate now stands at a precipice at which it has never stood before." She rises from her curule chair and turns to face the window for a moment, before turning back to you. "Yet, the gambler only throweth the dice. Fate hath already spun her life's thread before the dice have left her hand."

"But thou didst throw the dice." You insist, not sure what you're really arguing with anymore.

"I did." She simply acknowledges. You are silent. There is a pregnant pause.

And then suddenly there is noise and movement.

"Mother!" You burst out, staring in transfixed horror at the dark and distant shape of the city walls, the towers lit by fires and resounding with commanding voices. She is already turning when the gasp is leaving your lips, the tired woman she was but seconds ago having seemingly left the room.

"Arm thyself daughter!" She shouts, her voice commanding, as she leaps out of the window with the strength of a Prince of the Earth, her sandal-clad feet touching against the paved ground below with a loud thud.

A brief pang of jealousy fills your heart. If only the Dragons had chosen you, but you suppress it quickly and make your way through the palace, arming yourself in the process. At the last moment, you catch sight of a blue monkey wielding two swords, a red tongue from a fanged and laughing mouth; the Shogunal war-banner. Inspiration strikes you, and you take the banner with you, and the Shogunal mantle, the weight of which you still remember, with you as you leave.

. . .​

Everywhere around you people are opening the shutters of their windows, peering out in confusion and fear, or venturing out on the streets to look with terror-stricken faces at the fires on the walls, the distant gleam reflecting in their eyes like tiny stars. It strikes you that you have no idea if there is more or less fire than before. You could have sworn that this tower, or that section of the wall was not aflame when you last looked. Your lungs are burning, and your heart is beating in your breast like a raging drum. Once again, a silent prayer in your mind goes out; O Mela, Accordant to the Call of Battle, thou Petitioner of Clouds and Immaculate Dragon of Air, if I make it through this night, I beg thee and thy fellows breathe the Second Breath of Exaltation into my lungs.

As usual, there is no answer, and the rattling brigandine and mirror armor weighs heavy on your body when you arrive at the turreted northern wall. Your heart misses a beat, for despite a lack of gore, death and carnage, it is a sight out of your nightmares. The fires have been reduced, but nonetheless there is fighting on the city walls. Regardless of where you look, nowhere is Mother to be seen. A pang of fear for her life strikes you, but you suppress it and make your way up a staircase, ascending along the inner wall.

"At attention!" You command, at a soldier who seems not to be doing anything, and she turns around in shock when she sees you, "Clothe thy Shogun!" you command, handing him the mantle, which most will only see once in their lifetime. Despite the shock, he quickly gets to it, attempting to stammer several different expressions of assent to the command at once, but only managing an incoherent mess. Nonetheless, she puts the heavy mantle over your shoulders, and you resist the urge to chafe at its weight; it was not made for fighting, but the woven jade will nonetheless likely prove stronger protection than the armor you are wearing beneath.

With the mantle of a true Shogun over your shoulders, you make your way up to the top of the nearest tower, praying in your mind that the Dragons are with you. The soldiers there stare in astonishment at you for a second, and you unfurl the blue monkey banner. Could you have seen yourself, you would have said: What is this fearsome vision? From whence does the glint of fire dance in my eyes?

Swift arrows whistle you by, and the thick, distinctive smell of burnt wood and flesh assaults your nose. You want to vomit, you want to scream, you want to murder, you want to hide, you want to sing, you want to roar. This is the end times, it is life, it is death. Apokalypsis.

And then you raise the banner, and it is as if your mind becomes as clear as day. It was not in a pavilion, some two frasukhs from Keinginan-i-Gehan and amidst the soldiers of the City, that you became Shogun. Seconds become minutes, minutes become hours.

It is here, standing in the mantle of your many predecessors, and lifting high their banner, raising your voice to command and facing fate itself, that you become Shogun. Heaven and earth are one. You raise your voice:

One. All is silence. Your heart beats.

"Arise, ye soldiers of the Creation-Ruling Terrestrial Shogunate!" You hope your voice is not too shaky.

"Everywhere across these walls, raised by our forefathers, you are fighting with unparallelled strength and ferocity. Everywhere, a hundred thousand enemies assaileth you!"

Two. An arrow strikes your arm, clattering as if it had struck metal against the mantle.

"Everywhere across the walls", you repeat, "raised by our forefathers and maintained by their successors, you are fighting; an army of a thousand heroes! Everywhere, the enemy who hath assailed our Shogunate for a thousand years under the command of heaven-bedeviling Anathema, is crawling and clambering upon our walls like unto the foulest and most noxious centipedes and vermin. Your Shogun is with ye, the banner which hath flown for eleven epochs, flieth still!" You can already feel the hoarseness setting in, but you know that your voice is being heard.

Three. You are feeling light-headed.

"By universal decision", you begin, "we are ready to die!" Your vocal chords feel like they are being torn apart with sharp claws. "But seize ye, ye soldiers and servants of the Shogunate, with hardened hands, your spears and your bows! Force ye, our enemy from the walls of a hundred Shoguns!" A little part of you cringes inside. Maybe the speech is too overwrought? What if you are ridiculing the Shogunate in front of all the soldiers, and bring doom to the city? But your voice and body act on their own, independent of your mind.

Four. The wind, blowing sparks and cinders, has seized the banner, and it flutters in the wind. The blue monkey laughs again.

"If the Dragons are with us," you ask with a thundering voice, greater than your mutilated throat has room for, "then who is against us?" A roar of furious agreement goes up along the walls like wildfire.

Five. You are ready to die.

It starts out slow and limited, but soon it is rising like a crescendo, spreading faster than the flames, which the soldiers are already suppressing, "Worthy! Worthy! Worthy!" they shout. "Worthy! Worthy! Worthy!" goes the chant as resistance goes on with redoubled ferocity. Your body feels like it is acting on its own, no longer "you", but a tool wielded by occulted Sextes Jylis and incarnate Pasiap; the Immaculate Dragons who await the end of times acting through your body. Everywhere you go, you run along the walls, raising high the standard, barking orders and commands you will not remember a second later at soldiers. It is like you are possessed! Like your body is aflame. Despite the heavy armor, and the equally heavy mantle upon it, you no longer really feel their weight.

Here, you wield the banner like a spear and drive it into the throat of a Yalpageshig soldier whose eyes meet yours before he topples down his ladder. There, you barge into a brawl between soldiers, and you strike the banner down upon a Yalpageshig spear to break its shaft. Sometimes you set aside the banner and loosen many arrows from your gorytos into the hearts and faces, arms and legs, of soldiers massing beneath the shadow of the walls.

You do not know for how long you fight, or how long you are there, but after a period that feels either like an eternity, or no more than a few minutes, Mother arrives on your section of the walls along with Song, herself clad in armor and sweating from combat, and a number of other retainers. The air around Song is lit by sparks and flames, and Mother is cloaked in a whirlwind of sharp diamond dust. The light and flux of their animas cast them in a baleful light, and everywhere they go, people keep their distance.

It is late, when the last of the Yalpageshig retreat from the walls, pulling their ladders with them and fleeing in a semi-organized rout across the plains. With reinforcements from the eastern wall, which had also been under attack, it did not take long for you to repulse them. And when the last of the soldiers is gone, it is as if a hundred years of hard labor catch up with you at once, and you all but collapse on the ground. The mantle which you had worn so confidently now feels like a prison; a restraint. You support the suddenly immense weight of your body against the standard.

In the sky, the sun is dawning and showing her rosy face. The pale sky blushes at her radiance, and the clouds retreat across the sky. A dawn like this has risen over Keinginan-i-Gehan, the city called the World's Desire and Half-the-World, many times, and this will not be the last time it does so. But right now, in the post-battle exhaustion, you cannot help but think of how close it was that this would be the last time the sun would show her face in this manner for the Shogunate.

Awake, the
sun is reddening
and dawn hath broken
night's many shadows but I
am alone.

Your eyes follow the retreating soldiers, and your rasping voice recites the poem, almost out of muscle memory. The meter is archaic, the language is almost impossible to understand. As far as you know, the poem doesn't even have a name. It is a scribble in the Book of Praises; a little lament, ascribed to no one in particular. The first of three verses in a sad and sorrowful lament for a world disappeared, older than every other poem in the entire book. What its unnamed author weeps for, and yearns to return to, you do not know. And perhaps you never will.

Maybe you will one day be similar.

"Thy Most High Divine Majesty." Song's voice breaks your reverie and you turn around, your eyes suddenly wide open and your breath seizing in your throat.

In Song's arms, Mother lies splayed out, her breath ragged and bits of diamond dust now and then falling from her limp fingers like droplets of rain. A red piece of clothing improvised as bandage is bound tightly around her head, failing to conceal the red blood accumulated beneath. You know there is more blood in the forehead, and it looks worse than it is, but you can't stop yourself from blurting out - your voice dry and cracking - a question:

"Doth she yet live?" A small, bilious sensation of panic rises in your throat.

"She does, thy Most High Divine Majesty." Song responds brusquely. "We pursued the Yalpageshig when they fled, but chanced upon the Mirza and challenged him. We wounded him, but he beat us anyway and drove us off. Her Most High Divine Majesty, thine co-Shogun, was wounded when he smacked her with his pommel and concussed her severely." She lets you take in the news before continuing.

"This Mirza, Ruling-Exalted-like-a-Sovereign, he doesn't fight like a normal man. He's much stronger than he looks like, more skilled than feels natural. He fights like the Exalted." She leaves the second part unsaid; or like an Anathema.

You take a second to compose yourself before instructing her to return Mother to the palace. And then, you begin your own slow journey through the city, to return, making sure to inform temples and monasteries on your way to open the call to court assembly.

. . .​

This morning, it is your time to sit the Dais, and it is your time to have your face framed by a glorious radiate crown, and it is your time to gaze impassively at the assembled court before you, signing to your Voice - you almost considered placing Wave in the position - your desires and decrees. But your first court session does not have the advantage of calm or peace. The primary topic is from whom to seek aid against the Yalpageshig, and multiple times, you have to seek aid to quiet down the panic and arguments; a sign of how far the institution of the Shogunate has been pushed. After two grueling hours, however, you eventually arrive at the conclusion to send a plea for aid to:

Article:

[ ] The Lords of Seiarore - The aristocratic teyri clans, are the elite of the Seiarore archipelago. Experts in warfare utilizing Flame Pieces and Firewands of all sorts, the island is ruled by an elected male warlord, chosen by the female heads of the teyri clans upon the death of the last one. Since the 600s, the Seiaroreans have often served as mercenaries in service to the Shogunate, and their military support could now be crucial to its survival. However, Seiarore is a distant land, and you expect that even with good winds, it could take half a month for support to arrive.

[ ] The Satraps of Saata - The mercantile city-state of Saata, while nominally a satrapy of the Realm, is largely autonomous and poorly controlled. The reigning Sinasana family has broad powers to control it as they see fit, and Saata is a regional market without comparison. An emissary to Saata could potentially recruit a major mercenary force and send them back with a fleet loaned from Saata itself. There are many historic ties between the Shogunate and Saata, and the Sinasana family would be pleased to see the Shogunate favor them. An emissary to Saata might take a week to arrive and return, however.

[ ] SPECIAL - The Satrap-Protector Cathak Zamati - Normally an impossible suggestion, but you know the one-eyed woman who rules the Protectorate in the Realm's name well enough to know she cannot appreciate a conflict like this. An emissary to the Protectorate to Pacify the West could potentially convince her to intervene or broker a peace, but the costs of getting her to expend her forces on such an endeavor might mean being forced to adopt the Immaculate Philosophy, permitting her monks within the Shogunate or higher. Any Shogunal embassy, however, could reach back and forth from Keinginan-i-Gehan, to the Protectorate, within only a few days. This option is available because of Gift's personal connection to the Protectorate to Pacify the West.

As the talks of emissaries conclude, and they are dispatched with utmost haste, the court turns to other matters. But the rest of its proceedings might as well not matter to you. Receiving petitions and settling disputes seems almost absurdly pointless when compared to the gravity of the Shogunate's situation. And when, hours later, it comes to a close, you can barely remember most of what transpired. You take your leave to visit Mother on her bed. Sleeping, as she is, you could almost believe she was alright and would wake up any minute now, were it not for the bandages around her head. The physicians inform you that she will be fine, that her Exalted constitution will see her through, and you believe them. But the memory of Song carrying her, bleeding, from the field of battle remains with you nonetheless.

With Song trailing after you, you make your way through the palace corridors to arrive at the Sublime Tranquil Grave Temple. You make your way to the Temple to pray, and beseech a boon of the divine Elders. To intercede with the saffron-garbed goddess Mercury Wind-Swift, to put wind in the sails of your emissaries. The order you give is clear; do not disturb me unless it concerns the affairs of the very Exalted State itself.

Leave me alone with my prayers; those are the thoughts you think when you and Song make your way across the Image-of-Creation Square. Sometimes, when you look at her, you think of her poem so many day-cycles ago; a heart once silent remains, I shrug. You don't look into her eyes. You don't dare to see yourself in them.

In your mind, you have barely entered the Temple, before you are disturbed. Your annoyed inquiry into why you are disturbed is shattered in an instant:

Yalpagesh sends emissaries to discuss terms.

. . .​

And there you sit, back, under the roof of the audience hall. This time to a hastily assembled greater court, you sit in the Peacock Dais which has hosted Shoguns for hundreds of years. Framed by the wall's radiate crown of peacock feathers of jade and sapphire, you make sure to look at the emissaries who respectfully prostrate themselves with the ultimately ineffective, but disinterested contempt of a sovereign monarch. Not that the emissaries, clad in their deceptively simplistic brocade kaftans and traveler's cloaks could care more about your contempt. It is childish defiance, and nothing more but you feel compelled nonetheless. You have your Voice perform the ritual introductions, and bid them rise and speak.

You almost wish you hadn't.

"Thou heavenly world-governing Shogun, Eight Vermilion Holiest Gift of the Five Days, thou whose eyes art falcon-like and whose face resembleth the radiant moon, our Lord, the Mirza of all Yalpagesh and Shogun of the world sendeth us to parlay on his behalf and give you his terms."

You narrow your eyes, but sign to your Voice to have them continue. In the meantime, you let your eyes wander around the room, looking for possible supporters and opponents.

There are the heads of the Two Holy Monasteries, whip-thin and clean-shaved, both of them. They could never tolerate a peace with Yalpagesh, and would rather force your hand than permit a ruler who professes the Immaculate Philosophy to govern them.

"To the south lie the temple-fortresses of Putihay and Hitamay. These protect your City's unwalled neighborhoods, and these have been encircled by the army of our Lord, and the way to the City standeth open before his victory-laden armies."

There, your eyes pass over the city notables of the rich Zhavabad neighborhood. Sitting calmly, one feigns disinterest, others listen with intent. They might prefer to spare their neighborhood, than see war come into the City.

"The Shogun, in his wisdom, hath appointed a governor for the territories he hath seized with his firm, falcon-like grip, and wishes to spare the heavenly, Shogunal City further suffering. For though the Scarlet Empress seized the Desire-of-the-World, she left it a hovel, where he would seize it gently, and crown her with the world."

There, between two pillars, the Antangabad and Bihustani notables sit together. Both neighborhoods have long military traditions, and their notables seem to be of similar mind. They would not support the treaty.

"His Most High Divine Majesty, the Shogun-Mirza Ruling-Exalted-like-a-Sovereign, who is also called Eight Vermilion Exalted Sovereign, begs of thy co-Shogun to abdicate her position, and of thee to permit his Most High Divine Majesty entry into the City. Thine co-Shogun, her Divine Majesty, he would grant governorship over the Islands, or permit her to leave with all her possessions guaranteed." You raise an eyebrow.

The head of the palace garrison stands alone. She has the privilege of bearing her sword in here. She casts sneaky gazes at you, which she doesn't think you notice. You would not wake up in your bed tomorrow if you allowed this treaty to go through.

"And thee, his Most High Divine Majesty would have stay with him and take residence at his court with titles and possessions. All the privileges and rights of the Holy Monasteries and Temples shall be guaranteed, and the City shall be protected from sacking or plundering. His Most High Divine Majesty desireth not to bring about the end of the holy world-governing Shogunate, but its revivification. To thee and thy co-Shogun, he sendeth his compliments, for the Five Days Dynasty hath shepherded and stewarded the City with utmost care and statesmanship, and he perceived well the heroism with which thee raised its ancient banner."

And there sit Seven Cerulean Far Vision and Nine Saffron Swift Thought, the Head Treasurer and her secretary. Loyal, both of them, but a new administration would threaten their ability to skim the treasury far more than your ineffective Shogunal administration can.

"According to the ancient customs of the Yalpageshig, and the laws between nations, though it pains our Lord, should thee reject his merciful offer, the heavenly Shogunal city would be given unto his soldiers for three days of plunder."

There, Wave and Song sit together, the former's nails probably piercing deep into the palms of her hands, and the latter as surprisingly calm as ever. You think of the soldier whose eyes met yours, when the speartip of the banner impaled his throat. You look away from Song.

"And the fates of both thee, and thy co-Shogun would lay in the hands of his Most High Divine Majesty's decision, should his victory-laden armies reduce the ancient walls of thy city into rubble."

Opposite the commander of the palace garrison, the commander of the citadel is sitting cross-legged. He put the torc of rule on your neck when you were acclaimed before the army. Even if you made peace, you do not think he would acknowledge it.

"Mere hours ago, his Most High Divine Majesty tested the defenses of thy City, and though by the most valiant defense of its Two Heavenly Shoguns, the attack was repulsed, it matters little. In defeating the Shogunal Expeditionary Army, our Lord hath deprived thee of an arm; in defeating our Lord's army, thou hast only shaved his Most High Divine Majesty's beard. An arm, once cut off, can never grow again; but a shorn beard will only grow all the better for the razor."

There is Laughing Dancer, in the guise of a court servant. You can recognize her bearing and expression anywhere. You wonder if she would simply lose interest in you if you accepted such a peace. If you would wake up one day, with her sitting astride your body before digging out your heart and consuming it.

"When our Lord set out from the East, he conquered all the world. Whoever opposed him was killed. If thou escapeth into the sky, or the ocean, it matters little. Thine only policy is to make peace between us. His Most High Divine Majesty, in his infinite love and mercy, granteth thee the remainder of the day-cycle to accept or reject his offer, or he shall lay siege to the holy City with force that cannot be denied."

Everywhere you look, you find yourself pressed against the wall. What a cruel temptation of peace you are given. A poisonous apple has found its way into your court. You think of Mother lying in her bed, bandages around her head.

The emissaries take their leave, and leave the court in silence. And you are left with your many thoughts in a city that soon seems all too small, and a world that now seems far too vast for tiny little you.

Article:

Is this fair? Do you deserve this?

[ ] - No. Holiest Gift will gain the Major Principle: Struggle Against Fate.

[ ] - Yes. Holiest Gift will gain the Major Principle: Fate Abides as Fate Must.

 

[Chehrazad]

I... Uh, dunno what's going on.

Click to shrink...

I have given up on predicting the future of anything in this quest

Click to shrink...

From what I recall we had been conquered and someone else is aiming to conquer us in turn?

Click to shrink...

Alright, so, uh, I get that it's been five months, and no one can remember anything, so I'll do this instead. Characters marked in brackets are dead or missing.

Major Characters

Eight Vermilion Holiest Gift, the main character and acclaimed co-Shogun of the Great Western Shogunate.

Three Red Rising Song, one of Holiest Gift's closest friends and an Exalted martial artist from a military family.

Twelve White Calm Wave, Holiest Gift's mistress of the robes and her closest friend, from a merchant family.

Six Gold Gentle Palm, Holiest Gift's mother, Exalted and reigning Shogun of the Great Western Shogunate.

Side Characters

[Seizing-Prey-like-a-Falcon], prince of Yalpagesh who sought the aid of the Shogunate in a succession dispute with Ruling-Exalted-like-a-Sovereign.

Seven Cerulean Far Vision, head treasurer of the Shogunate. Reputed to be corrupt and skimming off the treasury for herself.

Nine Saffron Swift Thought, secretary of the treasury under Far Vision.

Cathak Zamati, the Realm's strongest appointed imperial satrap in the entirety of Creation's Southwest. Once held Holiest Gift in captivity as a diplomatic hostage.

The Voice of the Shogun, technically a court title, but refers to Ten Lilac Sonorous Trill, Six Gold Gentle Palm's man appointed to the position. Took a major role in maneuvering the Shogunate to war.

Antagonists

(?) Seven Cerulean Laughing Dancer, Lunar Anathema and heart-eating shapeshifter. Takes the guise of a handmaid by the name of Two Brown High Peak, and has mysterious motives.

Ruling-Exalted-like-a-Sovereign, reigning Mirza of Yalpagesh and would-be conqueror of the Shogunate. Fashions himself Shogun and seems to be infatuated or otherwise interested in Holiest Gift.

---

The Story so Far

The Background
Eight Vermilion Holiest Gift is the acclaimed heir, and daugher of the Shogun-Banu Six Gold Gentle Palm of the ancient Great Western Shogunate or Blue Monkey Shogunate as it is derisively known by its enemies. Her closest friends are Twelve White Calm Wave and Three Red Rising Song, who both have positions at court. However, under past Shoguns, the Great Western Shogunate has declined in power and importance and lost much of its territory to The Realm, a great empire with its capital in the center of the world, named Creation, and to the Sublime State of Yalpagesh, ruled by the Semerw dynasty. The former has appointed an imperial satrap by the name of Zamati, from the Great House of Cathak to govern much of its conquests, organized into the Great Protectorate to Pacify the West. The latter has conquered much of the lands around the Shogunate's capital of Keinginan-i-Gehan, and now regularly receives payments of tribute from its Shoguns.

The Story
At a fateful court session in the monsoon season, a prince of Yalpagesh named Seizing-Prey-like-a-Falcon beseeches the Shogunate for help in a succession dispute against the promise of returning all lands west of the Karvand River, which could potentially see the Shogunate break its encirclement by Yalpagesh. Holiest Gift's mother, the reigning Shogun, agrees to the deal and sends the prince back into Yalpagesh with a Shogunal expeditionary force. Holiest Gift is terrified of this decision, as it could mean the end of the Shogunate. In the meantime, Holiest Gift whiles away her time with her friends composing poetry and attending court rituals, wondering about the future and reminiscing about the Shogunate's bitter history, and the immense responsibility on her shoulders.

While the expeditionary campaign is initially a success, the Mirza Ruling-Exalted-like-a-Sovereign manages to turn the campaign around and defeats his brother before marching on Keinginan-i-Gehan. Holiest Gift, unknowing of the impending danger, participates in a royal tiger hunt in which she comes face to face with the shapeshifting Anathema - a kind of demon masquerading as a human - Seven Cerulean Laughing Dancer, who almost kills her until she decides to masquerade as one of her servants instead and follow her back home. On her way back to Keinginan-i-Gehan, Holiest Gift encounters upon Ruling-Exalted-like-a-Sovereign's military camp, who offers her a position at his court and declares his intent to claim the Shogunal title for himself, once and for all. Holiest Gift, distraught by the terrible news, returns home to tell of her encounter, and the Shogunate prepares for war.

Holiest Gift is given an acclamation, a ritual tour through the city in which the populace of the city declares its support for her, and she is elevated to her mother's co-Shogun. The next night, Yalpagesh assaults the city to test its defenses, and Holiest Gift fights in the battle for the walls and rallies the troops defending them. Her mother is wounded and receives a concussion that knocks her unconscious in chasing the retreating troops, when she comes face to face with Ruling-Exalted-like-a-Sovereign, and Rising Song expresses her suspicion that the Mirza may be Anathema as well. The next day following the assault, Holiest Gift makes the decision to send a plea for help, and the Mirza sends emissaries to the Shogunal court to deliver his terms of peace that would involve the total annexation and integration of the Shogunate into his realm, and Holiest Gift realizes that even if she wanted to, her own court wouldn't back accepting the terms.

 

[UmbraofChaos]

In honor of the update, a meme to commemorate Gift's tie of infatuation and appreciation for poetry. Whatever the source. Even if it's a conquering—