Tsasi Saj

Tsasi Saj, also known as Tsasi Kuan and Tsasi Rai, united the three Kuan ethnicities into the Kuan Empire, which eventually led to the creation of the triple kingdom and Spiral Empire. He united the empire in 52 PS and ruled until 29 PS, when he retired and allowed his daughter, Ossei Saj, take over his role as leader of the Kuan people. He died in 6 PS at age 73.

## Early Life

Tsasi Kuan was born to an unknown man and Khulan Kuan, a member of the Kuan ethnic majority in the region and part of Ganbaatar Rai's clan. As a child without a father, it fell to Ganbaatar Rai to determine who would educate him in necessary masculine activities, including helping him make his own yurt. Ganbaatar had long wanted to marry Khulan Kuan after the death of his own wife and murder of his spouse in a raid from a nearby predominantly Hsia clan. He offered to raise Tsasi Saj as his own if Khulan agreed to be his wife.

Khulan accepted the bargain, thinking it the best choice for her only son. This put her in an awkward position. So long as she did not produce an heir for Ganbaatar Rai, her son was set to inherit, but she looked like she wasn't following through on her side of the deal. Khulan decided to protect her son and surreptitiously consulted the clan's shaman for herbal teas that would make it difficult for her to become pregnant.

Tsasi Saj's early life was typical for a rai's designated heir. As it became clear Khulan would never bear him a child, Ganbaatar took out his frustration on Tsasi Saj because hitting a child was far more accepted than hitting a wife. Tsasi Saj knew he could one day challenge Ganbaatar for his position as rai and dedicated himself to becoming a better fighter than his father. At age fifteen, he killed him and became rai of his own clan.

Many other members of the clan had disliked Ganbaatar Rai as well and Tsasi Saj was popular, despite being young. With the support of the shamans and spiromancers in his tribe, thanks to efforts by Khulan, he consolidated power, ousted those who didn't support him, and won three quick victories against bothersome neighboring clans.

## Unifying the Empire

In 57 PS, news came from Diao that it had ended its centuries' long dispute with Ju. Now, the Diao emperor intended to treat Ju as a vassal state instead of an enemy. Tsasi Saj recognized the danger immediately and called a meeting of rais to discuss defensive action. Fooled by his age, the other rais refused to take him seriously. That same year, he orchestrated a marriage between his child Zaya and Bilgüün Rai, doubling the size of his army. Then, he set about unifying the steppes.

Tsasi Saj relied heavily upon shaman support in the early days, forcing his enemies to fight on inauspicious days and at inauspicious locations. He also recruited heavily amongst women, who were not always encouraged to fight but natural horseback riders and archers. His spies fomented dissent and rallied support behind him as the only way to defeat a undistracted Diao Empire until, three years later, he declared himself saj, or great leader of the Kuan people.

## Military Campaigns

Traditionally, leaders kept their people satisfied by providing them with plentiful food, herds, grazing land, and luxurious or exotic clothing. Unified, as they were, the Kuan people needed someone else to fight and Tsasi Saj decided Diao was the obvious choice, after spending three years portraying them as monstrous in his propaganda. Diao military officers were used to fighting small, decentralized clans, not the unified might of the Kuan army, and fell quickly. Tsasi Raj granted them autonomy in exchange for heavy taxes and favorable trade agreements and moved on to Ju, which fell in 43 PS, and Dhi, which fell in 31 PS.

While the Ju campaign resembled the Diao one, his armies ran into difficulty in the cold, high-altitude parts of Dhi. Though Dhi did not have a strong military, its people had experience in the mountains and excellent magical traditions. Horse archers were less effective in steeper environments and they struggled to implement the classic feigned retreat on a mountainside too steep for horses.

Ossei Saj, Tsasi Saj's child with his wife Sarnai, saw the near universal spiral literacy in Dhi and made it her mission to integrate spiromancy into the kuan army. Previously, women fought alongside men in the rank and file, sometimes as spiromancers, sometimes as physical soldiers, but there was no real strategy governing when spiromancers acted and who defended them. Ossei Saj pulled them out of the regular ranks and trained them to work with one another strategically, sometimes as dodos, sometimes as scouts, sometimes in the battle itself. During the fight for Dhi, cymancers first defined themselves as separate from regular spiromancers and shamans.

Tsasi Saj was so impressed by Ossei Saj's ability as a commander and leader, he retreated to the north, where he used a small contingent to force the Ma'hea people off the island. In 30 PS, Tsasi Saj declared the island a unified triple kingdom, watched over by Kuan leadership, and he retired in 29 PS.