Red Lotus Congregation

The Red Lotus Congregation is a recently created federation, founded around the Cult of the Lotus' Great Priest Dihong Xinjianng. After an apparent fatal accident, Xinjianng claimed to have received a vision from the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All", which told him he was to be the Great Leader of Men to "unify all there is and will be in His name". After decades of preaching and manipulating the poor and the distraught in the Changrila Empire, he rose up against the God-Emperor in a bloody civil war that took decades to suffocate. The defeat of Xinjianng was not total, however, since he managed to escape with thousands of his loyal followers to the abandoned shores south east of the Cornfloor Peninsula. There, he built a dark replica of the Changrila Empire, with all free will extriped from the population by exhausting cult activity and the Holy Guard, the main arm of the Church that looks after any threat against the now ancient Great Leader and the Father of All. The area is notorious for the Kinh Hee Palm Grove, a massive extension of coconut trees said to have been planted by the second God-Emperor of Changrila (despite Xinjianng's followers affirming that it was planted by Xinjianng's predecessors). 
== History ==
=== Precedents ===
To really know the history of the Red Lotus Congregation, one has to go back to the end of the Azanese Civil War. This massive conflict split apart the most powerful empire at the time, giving birth to the Empire of Changrila. After more than a century and a half of war, the seemingly unbreakable stalemate was finally ended with the Treaty of Nefkin. With this, the region of Changrila effectively becomes independent from Azan, as long as the changrilese authorities reject any further claims to the Azanese Throne and control of the Azanese government. While this satisfied the Changrilese noble families and high functionaries, it was not as well received by the common folk. While peace after a century was a godsend for many who didn’t have to fear to be drafted anymore, the truth was that many generations had grown up known nothing but war. Tens of thousands of soldiers and mercenaries suddenly weren’t needed anymore. Many of those went to work to the countryside, but many more ended up as beggars and bandits, using their skills in warfare to assault any traveler they could ambush. Hundreds of bandit groups preyed upon the caravan trade in the country, making roads unsafe and limiting the central power’s ability to control the other provinces. This lack of control allowed many regional lords, slowly but surely taking over the local administrations, although the effects of this would only be decades afterwards. Poverty and hunger were threaten to collapse some of Changrila’s border provinces, while the inner provinces, fat on taxation, had their attentions elsewhere. The increase in arable land and manpower managed to increase the country’s population by quite a margin, worsening the problems, since the economy couldn’t grow as fast as the population.
Ironically, the arrival of the Witch-Elves to the eastern borders of Changrila actually managed to slow down these problems for a while. The mass invasion of the eastern provinces required the central government to focus their efforts in stopping their advances at all costs. The witchelven had claimed a massive portion of land from both Azan, Changrila and other nearby states, who were forced to form an alliance to stop the witchelven. Tens of thousands were once again conscripted into the Changrilese armies to stop the invaders, which they did after a decade of war. Slowly but surely, the Changrilese armies recovered most of the lands that had been conquered by the witchelven, and the war devolved into border skirmishes. Changrilese authorities built a massive wall to protect themselves from the witchelven attacks, as well as a series of fortifications prepared to offer resistance to further witchelven attacks, though skirmishes and incursions are frequent in those areas where the military reaction is slower and/or the defenses are more lacking.
This massive construction project required a ton of resources from a country that was economically exhausted. Once again, the return of the soldiers back to home caused a massive spike in unemployment, especially in the cities. The general turmoil of the population was causing revolts and protests in both the cities and the countryside, which were quashed by the army. However, the central government realized this situation could result in a collapse of the state, and thus began to try rapidly to apply many reforms to alleviate the situation in the countryside. To do so, the Emperor of Changrila decided to concentrate both the political and religious authority of the country into himself, creating the figure of the God-Emperor, and the many theological reforms done to justify this move were codified into the Faith of the Divine Light. While this unilateral decision caused a lot of tension, especially in some of the more traditional areas, still loyal to the Old Azanese Faith, the newly bestowed power allowed the God-Emperor to realize extensive reformations of the economy and the army. This was greatly helped by the hiring of new government officials, recruited from the regions most affected and thus were able to identify the problems these areas suffered, and thus acted accordingly. These reforms managed to hit the mark and in a couple of decades, Changrila not only had revitalized their trade, but also reduced the bandit activity and reinforced the eastern borders.
However, this was not going to last. After a couple of strong God-Emperors, Changrila slowly stagnated in what is known as the “Great Decay”. The control of the God-Emperor was delegated more and more into his bureaucratic administration and the local nobility, dedicating their time and efforts into becoming patrons of arts and culture. This abandonment of government eroded the authority of the God-Emperor, granting a lot of power to the higher echelons of society. The nobility and government officials took this opportunity to expand their personal power and wealth, using their influence to amass great fortunes. In particular, the changrilese nobility and high officials had, over the decades acquire a lot of farming lands, abandoned by their owners due to the Azanese Civil War and the Witchelven Wars, and later using and abusing their power over the farmer. Heavy control of the legal system, the taxation and the prices pushed many farmers to sell their lands for a pittance. This left tens of thousands under strong chains of servitude, unable to make a living doing anything else but work the lands that their ancestors had tilled for millennia. Those who did not stay moved to the cities in search of opportunities, but even then, they would find nothing of the sort.
The cities had become lavish shows of luxury and decadence, where the nobility and the government officials displayed their riches in extravagant events. Outside of this displays of wealth, the common folk were more and more desperate due to a stagnant economy and taxes more overbearing by the day. Slums grew around the centers of power and government, and it was in here where crime and drug use became rampant. Plagues were common in cities, too dirty and poor to prevent the seasonal epidemics. Even the army suffered for this corruption, with many officials taking money from their funds to live lavishly, leaving their men underpaid, underfed and underequipped. As such, the witchelven began raiding the eastern provinces more and more boldly, pillaging and burning whatever they couldn’t carry back to their empire.
This state of affairs would continue to stagnate for centuries, until around 200 years ago, where the events of the Dihong Xinjianng Rebellion would take place.
=== Early life of Dihong Xinjianng ===
Dihong Xinjianng was the seventh son of a local noble family in the Changrilese province of Buhiau, close to the eastern border. Due the rules of succession, he was unable to inherit anything worthwhile from his family’s estate, and thus Dihong Xinjianng was tutored from a very early age to apply for a job in the Imperial Administration. To facilitate his studies, his family moved him to the provincial capital to study. There, he studied things such as economy, philosophy, religion, law and history. He also saw firsthand the terrible state of the Changrilese economy. The poverty he saw daily in the outskirts of the city combined with the luxury many of his noble family and peers enjoyed shocked Dihong Xinjianng to the core. The traditional values and virtues defended by the old Azanese Faith and by the Changrilese Faith of Divine Light clashed heavily with the reality he saw in the city. At the age of 19 he took the Imperial Exams, but was rejected. He went back to his studies, but also expanded his fields of study with matters such as basic medicine and alchemy, and also the study of the Azanese New Faith. It was during this stage in his life when he began to show symptoms of epilepsy, affected by small periods of convulsions and loss of consciousness. At the age of 21, he took the Imperial Exam once again, but he failed it again. Sources say this drove Dihong Xinjianng into a fit of rage, and made him abandon the residence where he lived. For three years, he completely disappeared, his family and colleagues not knowing where he was or where he had gone, despite the efforts made to search for him.
According to his writings, Dihong Xinjianng lived as a beggar for months, and afterwards he went to live in the rural areas of the province. The more he travelled the more differences he found between his old cozy way of life and the harsh reality of the lower classes. He worked at anything that could allow him to find food and shelter. His knowledge of alchemy and medicine made him quite popular between the poor and the downtrodden, and he finally settled in a small rural town. This area was not a peaceful one, since it was close to the eastern border, and witchelven raids were common enough, as well as raids of the changrilese soldiers who, due to corruption at the highest levels, were underpaid and hungry, and thus had to feed of the land. It is at this point where, according to Dihong Xinjianng’s writings, he was running during a terrible thunderstorm to search for protection, and slipped and hit his face with the ground. The local villagers recovered his body and took him to his house for recovery, but the hit left him unconscious for days. According to him, he had a vision in which he saw the world being devoured by hordes of demons, and at the brink of collapse of human existence, a blinding light drove the demons away. That blinding light then spoke to him, presenting itself as the “Great and Holy Celestial Father of All”, the One and True God of the world. He then told Dihong Xinjianng that the world was at the brink of destruction. The corruption and evil of men and the other sentient species was breaking the balance that He sought to create, and that the world needed to be cleansed and ordered to acquiesce to His divine ideals. He then told Dihong Xinjianng that he was to become the “Great Leader of Men” meant to unify all there is and will be in His name, so that everyone could ascend to the next plane in the Cosmic Stairs.
=== Start of the preaching of the Faith of the Great and Holy Celestial Father of All ===
Once he woke up, he spent a couple of weeks in meditations, mulling about the meanings of that vision. After he finished his meditating, he told the town what he had seen and what it had been told to him. The peasantry quickly believed him, and soon he began proselytizing the nearby villages. His message of universal unity, brotherhood and to fight end of corruption and evil spread like wildfire between the downtrodden. It also helped that this new religion was quick to organize charities and common aid societies to offer help to the poor, the hungry and the sick. These entities also helped organizing defensive militias, to defend these new institutions to fight against bandits and the witchelven raids. Comparing them to the slow and often too late help offered by the Imperial Changrilese Army, these militias were poorly trained and equipped, but they were quickly available, since they recruited locally, and their religious fervor compensated them for all of their downsides. This meant that, even if their efforts were not successful, the locals would still prefer the Xinjianng Militias to the Imperial Changrilese Army. Many bandits actually joined the cult, seeing the direction the winds were blowing, further increasing the cult’s strength by adding hundreds of men experienced in the art of war.
Meanwhile, local authorities saw this new faith as a quaint thing, not particularly threatening to their interests. In fact, the organizing of their charity institutions and militias allowed local governors to reduce public spending in those areas, increasing their wealth considerably. This meant that not only the governors did not crack down this new faith, but also helped it spread in the shadows to reap the benefits. However, one thing that the local governors were quick to do was to pressure the cult into paying taxes. Most of these organizations did not deal in money for the most part, due to them being formed out of the lower classes, but mostly dealt in a barter system. This allowed them to be wildly independent from the local society and institutions, but also meant that they paid little direct taxes to the local government. After 10 years after the beginning of his preaching, Xinjianng officially named the group the “Red Lotus Congregation”, after a vision Xinjianng had where the “Great and Holy Celestial Father of All” gave him a red lotus flower as a sign of their compact. By this point, the cult had established itself firmly in all northwestern provinces, and was quickly spreading throughout northern and southeastern provinces. This also made them one of the most powerful organizations in the region, by all purposes creating a parallel government with their own institutions and militia. A militia that was growing at an accelerated rate. Thousands of volunteers were being trained by the original members of Xinjianng’s Militia to fight against the witchelven and even gain some ground against them, something that granted them a lot of praise within the rest of Changrila. Many peasants would donate all of their possessions to the Congregation, which allowed them to amass quite a massive fortune, used to spread more and more their message.
By this point, Dihong Xinjianng was becoming more and more reclusive, working incessantly in his great philosophical and theological works, leaving mortal matters aside for his followers to deal with. By this point, Red Lotus Congregation had gathered a lot of talented people, though many of them began to be more attracted to the Congregation’s powers rather than the Congregation’s ideals. The establishment of hundreds of temples to the “Great and Holy Celestial Father of All” was the thing that finally began breaking the status quo. The Central Government saw the growth of the faith of the “Great and Holy Celestial Father of All” as a real threat to the authority to the God-Emperor’s authority. The followers of Xinjianng were monotheists, and thus did not recognize the divine authority of the God-Emperor, and this allowed them to publicly criticize the government’s actions. The government also launched campaigns to discredit the Congregation, talking about the excesses of some of their higher echelons in their organizations. However, this was not particularly effective, and the growth of the Congregation’s goals began threatening the peace within Changrila. One of the biggest precepts of the Congregation was to “unify all there is”, and many feared that this would make Changrila’s neighbors (particularly the Azan Empire) that the Congregation would launch a war of conquest that would break the Treaty of Nefkin. Beginning a second great war between Azan and Changrila might have ended up with the loss of Changrila’s independence, and so the God-Emperor and the Central Government began moving against the Red Lotus Congregation.
=== The Minxieng Incident ===
For years, the Imperial Government had been trying to interfere with the Red Lotus Congregation’s growth in power and influence, to no avail. This was mostly done by pressuring the Congregation to pay their due taxes, with the Congregation always finding a way to give only a fraction of the amount demanded. The increasing financial and religious influence was also a thorn into the God-Emperor’s authority, with the Congregation effectively creating a parallel government in those areas where their influence was stronger. The local population also began complaining about the activities of the Red Lotus Congregation to the Imperial Government, accusing them of using proselytizing methods more and more encroaching in day-to-day life. The Congregation had become more reclusive, skewing their help to fellow members more and more. Many businesses belonging to converted would only hire fellow believers. Their masses were done in public places, interrupting the daily activities of the populations as a show of strength. Temples to the Great and Holy Celestial Father of All were built at ever-increasing speed, occupying important areas of the cities and quickening the conversion of the masses. The Congregation’s success with converting the poor and the miserable created a lot of fear in the higher and middle classes, who saw the increasing political and financial influence and strength as a threat to their way of life. The Congregation had always pooled their resources collectively, but now they had become one of the most powerful and rich organizations around, easily able to absorb and bully around any other business, expanding their holdings exponentially. To counter this, the Imperial Government began organizing plans to get local business and the country’s great fortunes to their side, but due to their slow reaction, this was only effective in big cities.
The last straw was when the Red Lotus Congregation began collecting taxes in a small frontier city named Minxieng. This small population was by all intents and purposes abandoned by the Imperial Government, and thus was near universally convert to the Faith of the “Great and Holy Celestial Father of All” once the Congregation had arrived there. This was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Not only they were taking the taxes that rightfully belonged to the Imperial Government (and thus encroaching on a vital function of the State), but their taxes were considerably lower than their imperial equivalents, fearing that this would cause other cities to start paying to the Congregation as the better option of the two. The Imperial Government sent 15.000 men as a show of force to stop the Congregation and to detain the many members of the cult involved in taxation. News of the army’s moves spread fast, and reached Minxieng much earlier than the troops, and this gave the Congregation a chance to organize a defense. Many volunteers immediately joined the militia and, by the time the Imperial forces arrived to the city, the militias outnumbered them two to one. To avoid an all-out fight, the official at the head of the Imperial forces tried to talk to the Congregation leaders to surrender willingly themselves to the Imperial authorities, which they flat out refused.
It is not known what exactly happened afterwards, but what is known is that both armies clashed a couple of hours after the start of the negotiations. It was a chaotic clash, and both sides were comprehensively hurt. On the one hand, the Imperial forces were better trained and equipped than the Red Lotus’ equivalents, but they were not particularly well motivated and they were tired from a long travel to the border. On the other hand, the Red Lotus’ forces were much more motivated and doubled their opposition in number, but they lacked formal training and had no cavalry support. After an hour of combat, neither side managed to gain an advantage over the other, and thus the Imperial forces decided to withdraw to a safer position. While the Red Lotus’ losses were greater than the Imperial ones, the populace considered this a victory for the Congregation. After hearing the news of this fight, Dihong Xinjianng proclamed that the Changrilese government and the God-Emperor were enemies of the vision of "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All", become corrupted by the evils of the world and attacked their own countrymen. Dihong Xinjianng then proclaimed that the Red Lotus Congregation would no longer obey any kind of governmental order, effectively revolting against the God-Emperor. He then went a step further and proclaimed the “Kingdom of Heaven on Earth”, that would become the stepping-stone for a unified world that would bring brotherhood, unity and prosperity to those who saw the light. After this, he publicly executed the imperial soldiers captured in Minxieng. This act is considered the beginning of what many historians have described as the Changrilese Civil War.
=== Changrilese Civil War ===
The Changrilese Civil War, or the War for Heaven as the followers of the “Great and Holy Celestial Father of All" call it, was a conflict that ravaged the Changrila Empire for nearly 20 years. The conflict would cause the destruction of dozens of cities, hundreds of small towns and cost the lives of millions of men between the fighting, the executions and the plagues and famines that came afterwards. The war would also put in question the authority of the God-Emperor and the Imperial Government, who saw the challenge of the Red Lotus Congregation as an existential threat for Changrila. The war also took a terrible level of violence, with attacks and retaliations against civilian centers being common by both sides.
The first stage of the war was marked by both the popular support for the Red Lotus and the slow reaction of the Imperial Government. Weeks after Dihong Xinjianng’s proclamation, thousands of small revolts happened all around Changrila. The Red Lotus preachers had been spreading throughout Changrila during the last couple of years, and because of that, there were thousands of converts even at the furthest points in the empire. These revolts mostly took the form of peasant revolts, with the lower classes rising up and attempting to overthrow their overlords. In many places, local authorities were able to stop these movements easily, forcing the cultists to run away towards the northeast. Other times, however, the numbers of converted were simply too great to push back without serious consequences, leading to destruction of towns, crops and the slaughter of tens of thousands. In many areas, the cult had actually spread to the higher classes, and in those locations it was the population loyal to the God-Emperor the ones who fled in terror to the southwest. This rebellion did not limit itself to the peasantry and the nobility. Many units in the Changrilese Imperial Army had converted long ago, hiding their new alignment for fear of being expelled. Now, however, many of these units simply waited until they were ordered to march against the rebels, and once they were there, simply defected to the Xinjianng Militia. The biggest incident was the First Battle of Fenqui, in which two rogue units of the Imperial Army tried to raid the Imperial Palace to assassinate the God-Emperor. While this attempt ended in disaster and all traitors captured and publicly executed as a warning, the fact that the cult had spread to that point made the Imperial Government terrified from any further treason from the ranks of the military.
The sudden chaos that all of these revolts and uprisings caused allowed the Red Lotus Congregation to strengthen their position in the northeast. Tens of thousands of men travelled to join the Red Lotus’ forces, many more joined to work for him, seeing this as a personal mission stated from the “Great and Holy Celestial Father of All". Most of these volunteers were nothing more than peasants, though, and so they had little to no experience with fighting a war. The task of training them fell under the Xinjianng Militia, since after so many years of fighting the witchelven, they had become a proper military force, hardened by constant war in the borders. They also received help from the turncoats from the Imperial Army, who were received by the Red Lotus’ cultists with open arms. Many of the civilian volunteers were put under training to begin crafting all of the weapons, armor and equipment their armies would need to wage a war. After half a year from the start of the rebellion, the Xinjiang Militia (now renamed the Heavenly Armies) began advancing towards the capital, hoping for a decapitating strike that would effectively end the war swiftly. Many historians today argue that this move was not as foolhardy as it could look. The Imperial Army was spread thin, trying to help the local zhouwei and xianwei to extinguish the local rebellions, which were threatening to completely ruin the economy of many provinces.
The Imperial Government considered that preventing the collapse of the economy ought to take precedent over fighting the Red Lotus’ forces, and this left the Heavenly Army a lot of room to prepare and consolidate their position, advancing to the west and southwest occupying as much land as possible. While at this early stage of the war Xinjianng’s forces were unable to siege any of the big provincial capitals, they were able to take over many of the smaller towns and cities. The Red Lotus’ followers always celebrated these victories by sharing all the food reserves the local nobility and rulers had stacked, trying to gain the favor of the people. This was necessary, since not only they needed them to keep the economy active, but also to increase the size of the Heavenly Army. To organize the war effort, the Red Lotus seized all the farmland they could come across, to put in the hands of groups of cultists (shehnogs), to try to continue food productions. Secretly, the shehnogs had orders to burn down all the crops if imperial forces retook the land. This would worsen the famines as the years went by. At the same time, the Heavenly Army also aimed to conquer as much farmland as possible from the God-Emperor loyalists, which could cause hunger and unrest in the imperial cities.
The Heavenly Army avoided any initial direct confrontation with the Imperial Army, preferring to move fast through the countryside. At the same time, the Imperial authorities were still busy putting down rebellions, preferring to fortified their positions within the fortified cities, too strongly protected to be besieged by the Heavenly Army, mostly composed of masses of light infantry and cavalry. This didn’t mean some big cities did not fall under the grasp of the Red Lotus. The fall of the fortified city of Fuhuxoi thanks to the guard units being secretly members of the cult and opening the doors during the night, marked a turning point for the war. Fuhuxoi, one of the richest and most influential cities in Changrila, falling in less than a day due to treason, sent shockwaves to the rest of Changrila, increasing the rate of the uprisings throughout the land. Dihong Xinjianng turned the Fuhuxoi into the new capital of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. The capture of this city also meant that the Red Lotus also gained a fortified river port, which would let them go straight to the capital of Fenqui by navigating downriver.
This made the Imperial Government finally appreciate the true threat that the Red Lotus posed. The God-Emperor ordered to mobilize all navy ships that could navigate in rivers to block the advance of the Heavenly Army. The God-Emperor also ordered a mass conscription to fight the great numbers of the Red Lotus’ fanatics. However, instead of moving to the imperial capital, Xinjianng ordered to consolidate their holdings, reinforcing the authority of the Red Lotus over the people and the economy. He ordered the forceful conversion of all people within their territory, with the punishment for disobeying being the expropriation of all of their possessions. An since all the land and charity organizations were under the grasp of the Red Lotus, who ignored more and more those not part of the cult, it was a drawn out death sentence. This caused many refugees to move to imperial territory, who recruited them for their armies. Xinjianng also ordered a strong policy of iconoclasm, destroying any image or figure of gods they could find, since Xinjianng claimed that: “The might and majesty Great and Holy Celestial Father of All cannot be grasped by mortal men, and any attempt to do so is challenging His holy design, and thus will be punished as all heresy is”. The Imperial Government countered this by reinforcing the cult of the Changrilese gods, establishing a policy of iconoduly in favor of the God-Emperor. This slowing down of the Heavenly Army advances gave enough time to the Imperial Army to reorganize and prepare, but it also gave the Heavenly Army time to rearm and train, turning them from a horde of fanatics into a proper professional army.
While both sides prepared their forces for a direct clash, the thousands of rebellions and revolts continued to burn the country to cinders. Whoever side won, it was followed soon by the massacre of the defeated. From small rural towns to provincial cities, no place was safe from the purges from either side, splitting apart families, friends and neighbors with the fires of faith. Frequently, the defeated would try to burn down the crops or kill the livestock as a measure of last resort, to take any resources from their enemies, even after they won. This, alongside the mass levies ordered by both sides, caused massive starvation throughout the country. Many historians reported that some areas even devolved into cannibalism, with them pursuing their enemies not just to defeat them, but as a source of nourishment. Some regions kept active centers of rebellion and fighting even long after the war, and the scars of these battles still cover the empire even years after the war. 
The first great clash of forces between the Imperial Army and the Heavenly Army was the Second Battle of Fenqui, a year after the beginning of the rebellion. By this point, both armies were well trained and equipped, but there were still important differences between them. The Heavenly Army, knowing that their forces would be vulnerable to a fight of attrition, decided to finally try to take the imperial capital of Fenqui. They planned for a quick breakthrough, but before the assault they needed to reduce the Imperial Army to fully focus their forces on a singular point. The Imperial Army, however, knew this, and after extensive reforms of the army and their leaders, decided to outlast the Red Lotus. The defenses of the imperial capital were mighty, having been reinforced every single year since the start of the Azanese Civil War, and thus posed a near impossible obstacle for the Heavenly Army. The Red Lotus’ plan focused on starving the capital, blocking all entrances to the city so that it would not have enough to feed their population. The areas too close to the city to control, they would raze, and thus they would have no land other than whatever they could farm behind the walls. However, this strategy could not happen if the Imperial Army just garrisoned and protected all entrance routes to Fenqui. The Second Battle of Fenqui lasted five entire years, in which both sides pursued each other, with the Imperial Army, more experienced and with access to cavalry and army wizards. This long game of cat and mouse caused terrible losses for both sides, mostly due to skirmishes, disease and famine rather than from battle, though great clashes did indeed occur. This devastation was mostly felt within the city, since the state of intermittent blockade meant that food was not always available. This would ravage the population, with the God-Emperor even ordering to turn any arable area inside the walls to food production, even the near millennia old Imperial Gardens. However, this marked a turning point for the rebellion, since the resistance against the Red Lotus meant that any attempt of treason from within was met with popular punishment. Public lynching of members of the cult were frequent, as well as executions of prisoners. This began coalescing in the areas still under imperial control, where the general opposition against the Red Lotus began reducing the cult’s influence over the population. In contrast, the Red Lotus’ ever increasing religious and political edicts began chafing the population’s support. Dihong Xinjianng had shut himself off from the world, only talking through his most faithful supporters. He kept increasing the power the Red Lotus had over the lives of its members, all in the name of His divine designs. Imperial raids to Red Lotus controlled regions, an increase of banditry and the witchelven raids started turning the northeast of the country into a desert, worsened by hunger, disease, military levies and religious purges to those considered not pure or faithful enough. 
Year after year, the Imperial Army began gaining the advantage in the Second Battle of Fenqui, and on the 5th year, the Heavenly Army generals ordered a retreat to Fuhuxoi. This started the second phase of the war, where the Imperial Army began gaining ground against the Red Lotus’ domains in the north and the northeast. Fuhuxoi had been fortified as much as posible, and while it didn’t have the centuries of pre-prepared positions Fenqui had, the city held some of the most zealous and hardened members of the Red Lotus. Knowing this, the Imperial Army focused on retaking as much land as possible before dealing with the cult’s capital. Slowly but surely they began retaking the northern territories and then advanced eastwards. The Red Lotus’ main centers of support were completely burnt out after years of war, famine, pestilence, banditry, witchelven raids and the ever more paranoid and zealous religious persecution. More and more the Imperial Army were received as saviors and heroes, half as a legitimate feeling and half as a way to try not to be purged as traitors to Changrila. Purges did indeed occur, though, with the Imperial Army executing entire towns suspected of loyalty to Dihong Xinjianng and the Red Lotus. 
After fifteen years from the start of the rebellion, the position of Dihong Xinjianng, the Red Lotus and the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth was dire. The Red Lotus’ generals argued that there was no way to win the war without divine intervention, and such they pleaded to Xinjianng for a miracle. After a month of contemplation and meditation, Xinjianng came out of his chambers and told his followers that he had been blessed with a divine vision. In this message, the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All" had told him that he and all of his followers were to traverse heathen territory and cross the sea, where they would reforge the “Kingdom of Heaven on Earth” stronger than before, to recuperate and to plan their liberation of the world. After hearing the doubts and complaints of some of his generals, some of them even wondering if a conditional surrender wouldn’t be the best option, he then ordered the ones who believed him wholeheartedly to execute the others. This began the Great Purge of Fuhuxoi, where nearly a third of the Heavenly Army’s forces on the city were executed. After this was over, Xinjianng ordered a great march towards the coast. After reuniting every spec of resources they could take from their still loyal provinces, he then marched to the southwest, abandoning the city of Fuhuxoi and burning it for good measure, to keep the imperials from retaking the city. 
This began the last phase of the war, where millions of followers of Dihong Xinjianng marched throughout Changrila to try to reach a port to sail to the unknown. Historians still debate the numbers of men and women accompanying Dihong Xinjianng, but the general consensus seem to vary between 2 and 6 million. This force would ravage the regions that it crossed, being simply too great to fight directly, even for the Imperial Army. However, a throng of people of this size could not stay still, and thus they had to keep moving, razing the land from resources, taking whatever they could bring along and burning whatever they couldn’t. The Imperial Army chased them wherever they went, but were unable to effectively stop them, since most units were still busy in the northwest, extinguishing the last remaining centers of Red Lotus’ resistance that had been left behind. Millions of the cultists died while they were marching through mountains, swamps, rivers and the Imperial Army blockades they had to push through to continue.
The final year of the war mostly consisted of the remainder of the Red Lotus’ forces raiding coastal towns, taking whatever sea worth vessel they could find and moving over to the next port. While the Imperial Army’s and the God-Emperor’s orders were that any ship had to set sail once the Red Lotus’ forces drew near, this didn’t stop the Red Lotus from taking many ships. The final battle of the war, the Battle of Port Veiaxi. Veiaxi was a city near the Hiuan Tsi’s rivermouth, and due to a storm the days before the Red Lotus arrived, the city fleet had been unable to leave. This allowed the Red Lotus to take near all of the ships, and then sail into the unknown. While they were pursued by an imperial flotilla, the storms were still raging, and thus the Imperial Navy considered chasing them down too dangerous, assuming they would just sink and drown into the sea. 
The escape of the Red Lotus marked the end of the Changrilese Civil War. The toll of the war is measured in millions of people dead and a country ravaged by war, famine, disease and religious unrest. A good chunk of Changrila would be lost to the witchelven, who capitalized the unrest in their neighbor by conquering dozens of cities in the northwest and the west. The numbers of Red Lotus’ survivors are unknown, but they were unlikely to number more than 50.000 men. The ones that stayed in Changrila were hunted down and punished in the following years.
=== Arrival to Riririn Island ===
After the Red Lotus’ escape into the sea, information about the cult’s activities quickly vanished. Changrilese authorities firmly believed that they had all drowned into the ocean, and just focused on putting down the remaining centers of resistance, repairing the economy and trying to gain back the lands invaded by the drow. Changrila’s neighbors had a different story. There are many reports of sighting the Red Lotus’ fleet, mauled and in a state of disrepair, which convinced most of these countries that it was not worth finishing them off. Any attack against the coastal cities would easily sink the cult’s battered ships, so they just ordered any civilian vessels to move away if they sighted the fleet. After that, months passed without any glimpse of the Red Lotus, which many believe they had finally died of thirst or sank into the sea.  
Historians still discuss how exactly the Red Lotus’ fleet, battered, broken and with scant resources, managed to cross the Sunset Ocean and reach the coast of southern Scimitarian. However it was, they managed to land in Riririn Island. This area is famous in the region for the treacherous currents and storms that block the island from travel. As such, at the time the Red Lotus’ arrived to the island, no doubt losing more ships in the process, there were only a couple of small drow and dwarven settlements, disconnected from each other and from the rest of the Scimitarian. The Red Lotus then took to occupy the entire island. Whatever numbers were left, they were enough to destroy the native populations. Most assumed the Red Lotus offered many of the region’s inhabitants the chance to convert, but the lack of sightings of drow or dwarf cultists, it is safely to assume they didn’t accept it. Once the island was fully under their control, they began the reconstruction of the “Kingdom of Heaven on Earth”, where they stay to this day.
There have been many attempts of expansion by the Red Lotus, mostly focusing on the Cornfloor Peninsula and the nearby palm grove, though usually their numbers are not enough to settle indefinitely there before an alliance of Drow City states drive them off to the sea again. 
== Society and Religion ==
The Red Lotus live in near isolation from the rest of the world, and since their most fervent followers were the ones who finally reached Riririn Island, their society has become one of zealotry. Religion impregnates every single aspect of the populations’ lives, ruled by the Red Lotus’ High Priests, the kejinmushis, the only ones who can still see Dihong Xinjianng in person. The Kejinmushis claim that Dihong Xinjianng is in near constant connection with the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All", and as such, any other person not enlightened enough would succumb from the sheer holiness he emanates now. The Kejinmushis now rule every aspect of the island with an iron fist. Their society has turned into a dark shadow of changrilese society, but with all free will nearly fully extirpated from the population. 
There is no individual property within the Red Lotus. All property is owned and controlled by the Dihong Xinjianng and handled by the Kejinmushis, and they are the ones who organize the labor, deciding which job an individual will have for the rest of their lives. Working hard is not just a necessity, it is also a divine mandate, and the higher echelons of the cult always exalt the virtues of dedicating themselves fully to work and to the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All" above anything else. They are the ones who decide where the production is destined to, and to what purpose. The fear of divine reprisals for failing at their jobs keep the population focused at their tasks, with death by exhaustion being a common sight. Famine is a very real possibility, since many of the lands of the Riririn Island are not suited for agriculture, and near zero commerce with the outside means there is no chance to compensate for bad crops. Add to this that the Kejinmushis’s organizing of the agriculture is frequently subpar, and since their designs always come from the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All", it’s not them who failed, but those less enlightened. This leads of frequent purges, both to keep the population in line and to reduce the number of mouths to feed. Disease is considered as a divine punishment, and people who show signs of disease and weakness are told to sacrifice themselves for the Greater Good, usually by entering in the forest and never returning or walking into the ocean.
The main tool for control of the population is faith. People are indoctrinated in the faith of the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All" from birth, and any child who shows any kind of doubt during their education is disappeared without leaving a trace. Every day the Cult organizes multiple great prayer sessions, and these repeat every single day of the year. Every single misfortune is blamed on either divine punishment or the evil outsiders, wanting to defy and ruin the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All" while every fortune is due to the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All", Dihong Xinjianng and the Kejinmushis. The Church organizes the constructions of tens of thousands of temples, each one bigger than the last, only to be demolished and be built again. The Red Lotus’ iconoclastic beliefs forbid the use of icons as religious symbols, so instead they write the words of Dihong Xinjianng everywhere. Every wall of every house and building has engraved scripture, to the point where some houses are not allowed to have windows due to making them would remove the Holy Word from the wall. They also use song to compensate for their lack of icons. Prayers are sung constantly, night and day, in every town, field and mine in the area, and they never cease. Specialized members of the Cult, the Henjang Shenhang, are in charge of the heavenly choirs. They are not allowed to stop singing until exhaustion hits them, and if one of them ever loses their voice, they are taken away and disappeared. As such, they have developed a sign language to be able to communicate with each other and with their handlers, which they use while they sing their hymns. While they are not singing, they are put under an induced coma to allow them to recuperate their strength. All of this creates an atmosphere where faith is not only inescapable, but unquestionable.  
Language has also been taken over by the Red Lotus. One of the first things that was decreed was the creation of a new language, making outside intervention in the island much more difficult due to the language barrier. The Cult’s tongue is considerably twisted and difficult, while at the same time reducing the concepts used as much as possible, with the lower classes of people not even knowing enough words to understand other cultists from a different occupation. Concepts as “self”, “happiness”, “sadness” and “own” are some of the examples of ideas that have been completely erased from the Cult’s minds. Other concepts, such as “outsiders”, “evil” and “heresy” have been fused together, to keep anyone under the rule of the Red Lotus to not even consider any kind of contact with the outside.
== Military ==
The Red Lotus still preserve the structures of the Heavenly Armies, created during the Changrilese Civil War. However, it has evolved into a policing force, tasked first and foremost to obey the mandates of the kejinmushis. The army is divided into different sections. First, the professional trained army, originally made up by the surviving members of the Heavenly Armies, now comprising 1 out of 15 of the total population of the country. These forces are tasked with the protection of the country from outside threats, and nowadays they are the ones in charge of the Red Lotus’ attempts of occupying the Cornfloor Peninsula. They are mainly composed of light infantry, with auxiliary elements of light cavalry, allowing them to cover a lot of distance considerably fast. This speed is used to cut supply lines and wage and to harass the enemy without getting into a direct assault. In reality, the design of the Heavenly Army nowadays is both to intimidate the population and as a show of force, promising to protect them from the “devils” from outside. 
The second part of the Heavenly Armies are the Diwouixoian Zis or the “Enlightened Wave”, and comprises nearly the entirety of the population. At the orders of the kejinmushis, vast swathes of the population can be ordered to take up arms and fight against the enemies of the Red Lotus by using waves of human attacks. These soldiers will be barely trained beforehand, only being given the minimum necessary to identify and follow commands. They will be armed with whatever arms they can find, from simple spears to farm equipment, and rush the enemy while chanting their prayers. 
The third part of the Heavenly Armies is the Heavenly Navy, and this is the most vital tool for the Red Lotus to project their strength outwards. The Island of Riririn is near always surrounded by frequent fogs and storms. As such, their sailors have become experts not only at navigating within storms, but also at knowing the areas where sailing is easier. This has turned the Heavenly Navy into terrific pirates, able to strike fast and run away back to Riririn before the other powers in the area can react. However, due to the Red Lotus’ isolation, their actual ship production capabilities are not up to par with other nations, usually sporting older ships repaired over and over. This forces the Heavenly Navy to try to capture as many vessels as they can. Any prisoners caught are to be brought back to the island, to be enlightened by the word of Dihong Xinjianng and the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All". 
The fourth and final member of the Heavenly Armies are the Cinyan or “Kind Eyes”. These forces combine activities such as secret police, propaganda, special operations outside of Riririn Island and the enlightenment of the prisoners caught from outside. They act under the direct control and supervision of the kejinmushis, and always act behind a great deal of secret and mystery, not even having any kind of uniform of insignia distinction. The Cinyan also uses the very few wizards the Red Lotus has under their wing. Since the end of the Changrilese Civil War, the Red Lotus’ only chance of getting new wizards and their up to date knowledge is through piracy and kidnapping, thus the need for the Cinyan to be able to know how to break the individual’s defenses to make it into a true believer. Their methods, however, are unknown. 
== Foreign Relations ==
The Red Lotus Congregation has declared multiple times that they, and they alone, have the favor of the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All", and those who do not acquiesce to His holy mandate are heretics that need to be erased so that His divine designs could come true. This has made relations with foreign nations near impossible, and the sentiment is mutual. No neighboring country has ever had any firm alliance with them, and near all of them have fought against the Red Lotus’ piracy in the area. There’s also near zero trade with the outside world, outside of the lowliest of contrabandists and pirates, willing to accept any kind of payment. As such, many considered the Red Lotus Congregation as the most isolated nation in the world. Near all countries that know of the Red Lotus and the cult of the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All" have banned their worship, thus preventing the Red Lotus from gaining influence on their land. 
Two nations in particular want the Red Lotus gone: the Drow City States and the Changrila Empire. The Drow City States hold a grudge against the Red Lotus for the massacre of the original drow population in Riririn Island, and for their continuous attacks to the Cornfloor Peninsula. It is frequent to see many independent drow cities unite briefly to hunt down pirate activity or the Red Lotus’ expeditions to mainland Scimitarian. However, the forces needed for a full invasion of Riririn are outside of the independent cities’ capabilities, not to mention interests. 
The Changrila Empire also wants the Red Lotus destroyed for obvious reasons. The persecutions against the cult of the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All" has continued years after the end of the Changrilese Civil War, with small rebellions popping up every couple of years. Many changrilese official are of the opinion that this instability will not end until the Red Lotus’ main base is erased completely. However, many also believe that the effort of invading the island (especially an island as fortified as Riririn Island and with such terrible weather) would not be worth the effort. The Changrilese Navy monitors the routes taken by the Heavenly Navy, in the hopes of discovering a route where they could invade safely should the need to do so. 
== Geography and the defense of the island ==
The Red Lotus knows it has little to no support from the outside world, and that many nations would gladly collaborate to take down the cult. This need to defend themselves clashes considerably with the geography of Riririn Island. Riririn is a relative small island, formed out of volcanic activity eons ago. However, its current morphology gives little to no natural advantage to the defenders. The island is covered with lush forests and green prairies, covering extensive portions of the center of Riririn. The geography of the island shines for its smooth hills and low altitude, with the few mountain peaks of the island being relatively small and located in the center of Riririn. Pearl white sand beaches and palm trees, many of them extending for kilometers, cover most of the coast, making for a very idyllic scenery, but not for easily defendable landscapes. The few rivers on the island are seasonal, and mostly stay during the rainiest periods of the year. In sum, other than the continuous storms, typhoons and strong currents surrounding Riririn, the island has no effective natural defenses the Red Lotus could exploit in case of an invasion.
Knowing this, the kejinmushis have established that the island should become a mighty fortress, whether the landscape helps or not. The first of the great projects was to increase the population by any means necessary. After the voyage to Riririn and the conquest of the island, the Red Lotus’ members were barely above 40.000 individuals, nothing that could really stand up to any invasion. Thus, they decreed that every family must have as many children as possible, as fast as possible and as soon as possible. Women are expected to marry as soon as possible, and if a woman is not married by the age of 20, the Red Lotus will choose a partner for her. Families are expected to have at least four children by the 6th year of marriage, and failure to accomplish that is considered a huge shame. The Cult separates the children once they are old enough to not depend on their mothers, and from there they are educated in the worship of Dihong Xinjianng, the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All" and the kejinmushis. This is done in massive institutions at the hands of Cinyan, who monitor the children while they are put to work in either agriculture, crafts, construction or the exploration of the now abandoned dwarven and drow holds. The more rebellious, open minded or those deemed as a risk for the Red Lotus are quietly disposed of, whereas the ones with the biggest potential are set aside to be trained to become fellow Cinyan or even be adopted by the kejinmushis themselves. Once the children become adults, they are given a home somewhere far from their place of origin, with many of them never seeing their parents again after they are separated from them. Another way the Red Lotus has to increase the population is through pirate raids. The Heavenly Navy frequently participates in piratic activities in the Sunset Ocean, attacking any civilian vessel they can find, as well as unprotected coastal towns. This not only has economic objectives, but also to take as many women and children as possible. Once they are captured, they are given to the Cinyan, who then will use unknown methods to indoctrinate them into the faith of the "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All". All of these measures have increased the population exponentially, which has resulted in food production problems and famines. This has also increased the kejinmushis’ grasp over the population, since after just a couple of decades, most of the population only knew a world where the Red Lotus and "Great and Holy Celestial Father of All" rules without alternative or opposition, making any other option not only impossible to accept, but even impossible to imagine.
The other great project to defend the island is the creation of a massive series of fortifications throughout Riririn. Following a similar structure that the Changrilese Northeastern Wall against the witchelven, the Red Lotus has established a series of walls bordering the entire island, with many fortresses protecting the main roads to the inner regions. Adding to that, the Red Lotus has ordered the construction of the Heavenly Fortress, a massive structure designed to make the center of the island impenetrable, while also providing with enough arable land on the inside to be self-sufficient. The construction employs tens of thousands of laborers, many of them children, and the amount of resources needed to complete it is apparently draining the mineral reserves of the city dry. It is unknown whether the construction of the colossal structure is finished or not, due to the sheer ambition of the project (though many believe this is also part of the point, since it keeps the population busy and with the idea of an external attack always in mind). At the center lies the Heavenly City, the only proper city on the island and by far the biggest population center. It is a city of labyrinthine streets, as narrow as possible to help the defenders defend it the worst-case scenario. The old dwarven and drow towns and holds have been abandoned, and now are only use as a source of materials to exploit. The coastal cities are the only populations that could be considered cities outside of the Heavenly City, and that’s due to the importance of the Heavenly Navy to the Red Lotus’ society. 
Category:Nations
Category:Scimitarian