recursal/Fanatic-Fandom huggingface dataset:
Kel Isaure

> "*Any other corporal would be rooted here. I see a job to be done and we're going to do it.*" --Kel Iasure
>
>

Corporal **Kel Isaure** is a Kel soldier who served during the retaking of the Fortress of Scattered Needles in Ninefox Gambit. She is a crashhawk.

## Personality and Traits

Isaure is a quick thinker, and entirely callous as to carnage, casualties, and danger. She is amused by ironies and scornful of weakness, hating "screamers" in infantry situations and shooting them on sight. Though lacking formation instinct, she is willing to do whatever she believes will result in a win for the Kel, including using others' existing formation instinct against them. She is a crack shot.

## History

Corporal Kel Isaure was a tank captain, describing herself as a good one, before being stripped of her commission and broken all the way down for being "good at saying no to stupid orders." The reinjection with formation instinct didn't take the second time either, but she despite missing her tanks, she concealed her lack of formation instinct to remain with the Kel.

Isaure served under Colonel Kel Ragath at the Fortress of Scattered Needles.

Ordered by her captain to hold a residential complex in the Anemone Ward, Isaure survived the deaths of her entire patrol except for Kel Niaad. After searching the gore for equipment, Isaure insulted Niaad to keep him focused as she used debris and gristle to diagram an exit from the complex so that -- against orders -- they could rejoin the Kel and be useful. Describing both herself and Niaad as the dregs of their fighting force, she explained her lack of formation instinct and pointed out the drawbacks of his own, pointing out that her ability to ignore orders would allow both of them to do their job instead of being rooted to the Anemone Ward.

Planning to hit the surrounding heretics from behind, Isaure assembled weapons and relentlessly ordered Niaad to follow her through the surrounding residential cells, immediately shooting any civilians in their path. Upon reaching an area where heretics were setting up a machine, she ordered Niaad to charge them with grenades under her covering fire, to "light it up so our people know something's there." She assured Niaad he could make it and repeated the order several times to get through his whiting-out senses. When Niaad froze after throwing one grenade, Isaure scorched out his knee with her scorch rifle, pitching him closer to the machine and detonating his grenades with three more shots. Then, having achieved her goal, she sprinted away to find the Kel and "show them what they needed to do."

## Trivia

* The author describes Isaure as "a horrifying human being" but fun to write.

## References

1. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 13
2. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 13
Carrion gun

A **carrion gun** is a weapon used in the hexarchate to extract a revenant from their anchor. It appears in Ninefox Gambit.

## History

The New Anchor Orientation Packet describes the carrion gun as the instrument with which to extract a revenant from their anchor's body, after which the revenant, reduced to invisible carrion-glass shards, can be replaced in the black cradle. The shards can also be force-fed to a "volunteer" in order to give the revenant a body that can be tortured.
Ajewen Dzera

**Ajewen Dzera** was a Mwennin woman who appeared in Raven Stratagem and in the short stories Birthdays and Cheris and the Sea, and was mentioned in Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem. She was the mother of Ajewen Cheris.

## History

Dzera married Ajewen Derow, who became a Mwennin by marriage. They were partners for twenty-nine years. The two lived in the Mwennin ghetto in the City of Ravens Feasting and had a daughter, Cheris, whom they named after the high calendar day of her birth since the traditional calendar-saint name she should have had relied on a heretical calendar. When Cheris was old enough, Derow and Dzera took her on trips to the seaside, which they had visited together before.

Dzera attempted to pass on Mwennin stories and culture to Cheris, although when the little family moved to a house outside the Mwennin ghetto, they had to regretfully stop celebrating Mwennin birthdays and be more careful about showing their culture. At their new home, near a river, Dzera planted a garden with "everything from sorrel to moss roses."

Dzera later wondered whether there were any stories she could have told to prevent Cheris's withdrawal from the Mwennin, which she had denied to herself until Cheris, pale but resolute, presented her parents with the *fait accompli* of her acceptance to Kel Academy. However, Dzera continued to write to her there in grammatically shaky high language, to which Cheris responded in shaky Mwen-dal. Dzera and Derow also sent Cheris care packages, usually containing local food, sometimes sand dollars with carefully inoffensive designs painted on them. After Cheris's promotion to captain, they sent her an enormous stasis box of prawns, despite the expense.

On Cheris's twenty-third birthday, Dzera gave her a traditional raven luckstone, which Cheris kept with her from then on.

When the Mwennin were rounded up for extermination by the Vidona, Dzera and Derow were arrested in the middle of the night and immediately separated. Dzera, painfully restrained in a room where Vidona tortures were broadcast on the walls, prayed to fall dead when a haircutter trimmed her hair and remembered Vidona agents trampling her small garden. One of her torturers liked to wear flowery perfume.

Due to her relationship to Cheris, she was guarded too heavily for Shuos agents to extract her, and they could do no more than secretly administer an injection to take away her consciousness and spare her the pain of death. Her last thought was for her now-abandoned garden.

Video of her death, and Derow's, was later seen by Cheris.

## References

1. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 16
2. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 16
3. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 20
4. ↑ Cheris and the Sea
5. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 16
6. ↑ Birthdays
7. ↑ Cheris and the Sea
8. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 16
9. ↑ Cheris and the Sea
10. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 16
11. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 27
Fury bomb

**Fury bombs** are a type of exotic weapon used in the hexarchate. They are mentioned in Ninefox Gambit and Glass Cannon.

## History

As exotic weapons, fury bombs could not be used during cases of calendrical rot as extreme as the heresy at the Fortress of Scattered Needles. They are not powerful enough to overcome invariant ice.

Ajewen Cheris pondered whether or not this weapon could be used to destroy Shuos Jedao beyond his ability to regenerate.

## References

1. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 5
2. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Glass Cannon, p.240
Chocolate festival

**Chocolate festivals** are a type of festival in the high calendar. They are mentioned in Revenant Gun.

## History

There are several festivals in the high calendar that are devoted to chocolates. Having no ritual torture component, they are among the high calendar observances that Hexarch Shuos Mikodez considered harmless and remained in practice after the broadcast of the revised calendar.

A chant from the litany of one of these festivals, notable for its archaic form of the high language, was used by Ajewen Cheris to hack a calendrical lock.

## References

1. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 2
2. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 3
Esfarel 12

**Esfarel 12** was a physical reproduction of Heptarch Nirai Esfarel, created after the original's immurement in the black cradle. He is mentioned in Raven Stratagem.

## History

Nirai Kujen created Esfarel 12 before disappearing from the hexarchate. Esfarel 12 retains the original appearance of Nirai Esfarel, with some modifications and without the original's body language. He has no memory or knowledge of the original Esfarel or of any of the modifications which Kujen ordered made on him.

After Kujen disappeared from the hexarchate, Esfarel 12 monitored environmental controls in his new habitat while Kujen's anchor slept, and was used by him for occasional sex.
Kel Jua

**Kel Jua** was a Kel soldier who served on the cindermoth *Unspoken Law* in Ninefox Gambit.

## Appearance

Jua was a woman with "an astonishing knack for misplacing her elbows." She was not much younger than Corporal Kel Hadang.

## History

Against Kel taboo, Jua was in a relationship with Corporal Kel Hadang, risking execution to be with her.

During the Siege of the Fortress of Scattered Needles, Jua and Hadang met for an assignation in the cargo hold of the *Unspoken Law*. Unknown to them, their illicit relationship was among those tracked by the moth's servitors, including Servitor 124816 and Servitor 7777777, who held a secretive conversation in the cargo hold during Hadang and Jua's tryst. Witnessing a tenderness in the lovers' interactions and their careful silence even during climax, 124816 believed their relationship to be consensual and judged that Jua had not been coerced by her superior despite the dangers of formation instinct.

Hadang and Jua remained together for over twelve minutes, longer than usual, and then decided to couple again. Afterwards, they quickly dressed and returned to duty. Jua, fumbling for her comb, was the second to leave.
Innate Spiritual Strength

Innate spiritual strength was separated into seven different colors:

* Red
* Orange
* Yellow
* Green
* Cyan
* Blue
* Purple

Red was the weakest, and purple was the strongest. Since the beginning of the continent’s history, it was so rare to possess purple colored innate talent that you could count them using your fingers and it probably only happened once every several hundred years.
Kel Ankat

> "*Good luck where you're going then, sir.*"
> ― Kel Ankat
>
>

Lieutenant **Kel Ankat** was a Kel soldier who served in Heron Company during the assault on Dredge. He appears in Ninefox Gambit.

## History

Ankat had the best repertoire of Kel jokes of anyone Captain Kel Cheris had ever met.

He was on Platoon Three when Heron Company captured the Eels' weather generator. He had a hunch that the Eels were being rallied to rush the Kel. When Brigadier General Kel Farosh ordered the company to abandon the generator, Ankat joked that they could always volunteer to stay: "You know how much Kel Command loves volunteers."

Ankat survived the action on Dredge and rose with the rest of the company to greet Cheris as she arrived for high table. He returned her tacit smile with a sardonic grin. When Cheris informed them that Doctrine was breaking up the company and that only some of them might be able to serve again, Ankat remarked that Kel luck was always bad, but was able to read her expression and refrain from an anxiety-driven joke. He wished her luck wherever she was going, looked down at his hands while acknowledging her request to hear the company's names and dates of service, and, after the litany, encouraged her to eat her meal.

## References

1. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2
2. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 1
3. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2
Calendrical Rot

**Calendrical Rot** is a short story by Yoon Ha Lee which is set in the Machineries of Empire universe. It was first published in *An Alphabet of Embers* (July 2016, ed. Rose Lemberg) and reappears in Hexarchate Stories.

## Blurb

*A vignette from the hexarchate/heptarchate setting (formerly seen in “The Battle of Candle Arc”): when people go to war over calendars, weapons of assassination are not what they seem at first.*

## Summary

Due to calendrical discrepancies in the Gray Marches, the assassination of a high court judge with a compression gun before she could sentence the city-station of Nran for its heretical calendar causes calendrical rot to set in, breaking every clock and calendrical engine in the area.

## Trivia

* Calendrical Rot was originally written as a prologue to *Ninefox Gambit*. It was influenced by Mike Allen's poem "Metarebellion" and Tony Daniels's "A Dry, Quiet War."
* The author thanks Yune Kyung Lee and Sam Kabo Ashwell for beta-reading the story.
* The last line in the story is "Calendrical rot had set in." It is echoed in the last line of *Ninefox Gambit*: "Calendrical rot had set in again."

## References

1. ↑ *An Alphabet of Embers*: "Calendrical Rot"
2. ↑ Author's website
3. ↑ *An Alphabet of Embers*: "Calendrical Rot"
4. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Calendrical Rot (Author's Notes)
5. ↑ Author's website
6. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 24
Amputation gun

An **amputation gun** is an exotic weapon whose cone of effect causes amputation of limbs in sentient beings. It is described in Ninefox Gambit.

## History

Amputation guns built of components manufactured deep in the Radiant Ward of the Fortress of Scattered Needles were used by the heretics occupying the Fortress against arriving Kel infantry. The guns were placed in accordance with a heretical formation Cheris had identified, and amputated the limbs of anyone caught in their cones of effect, sometimes despite Kel defensive formations. Lieutenant Kel Hren was killed in the first attack. Captain Kel Miyaud survived long enough to inform Cheris that the gun had been fired twice at different angles, and that the heretics were advancing against Kel invariant gun fire.

Shuos Imnai also contacted Cheris to inform her that the gun had also affected servitors. The discovery that servitors were not formation-neutral under the heretical calendar and that their presence had affected the usefulness of Kel formations allowed her, with the servitors' assistance, to create new nonstandard formations that would protect the Kel from the guns' effect.

## References

1. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 16
2. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
3. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 16
Kel Garit

The following content contains plot or ending spoilers. Read with caution!

> "*Go ahead and shoot your way through, Jedao.*"
> ― Kel Garit
>
>

High General **Kel Garit** is a Kel officer who appears in Ninefox Gambit and in the flashfic Hunting Trip.

## History

Garit was an avid hunter, and was the only one who didn't find it funny that while he was much better at jeng-zai than High General Kel Anien, he couldn't win board games.

Upon learning that Shuos Jedao, then a major general, had grown up hunting, Garit, eager to get a gray tiger, invited him on a trip to a hunting preserve. Since hunting gray tigers involved a "stupid expense per round" and a shoulder-hammering recoil, Jedao retaliated by persuading Garit to visit a zoo first. As Jedao practiced photographing the wildlife, Garit discovered the zoo's red panda, and offered to expedite customs duties for Jedao to take one home to his nieces if Jedao would help him kill a gray tiger. Jedao graciously declined.

Over the years, Jedao played fox-and-hunters and numerous rounds of jeng-zai with Garit. Jedao also knew Garit's three children, one of whom he introduced to handguns and who was attending Kel Academy during the time of the Lanterner rebellion.

Garit responded when Jedao called Kel Command for orders after the Lanterners started using their children and hospital cases as human shields. Ignoring the moral issues with firing on children, Garit heartily assured Jedao that with Heptarch Shuos Khiaz handling the propaganda for the campaign there would be no problem with either Kel regulations or public opinion, and directed him and his swarm to shoot their way through. Jedao experienced a memory blackout of the rest of their conversation.

After the death of Jedao's revenant, Brevet General Kel Cheris experienced his memory of Garit's orders to fire on the Lanterners' children.

## Trivia

* In the comments to *Hunting Trip*, the author mentions that Garit is "not my favorite Kel, let's just leave it at that."

## References

1. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 21
2. ↑ Hunting Trip
3. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 21
Halash

**Halash** was a warlord whose planet was conquered by the heptarchate. He is described in Revenant Gun.

## History

Around the year 355, the Kel bombed Halash's holdings, killing him and claiming the planet for the heptarchate. They looted the warlord's lavish stronghold and, despite Kujen's entreaties, used the priceless archival materials in its library to fuel their victory pyre.

With the planet secured for the heptarchate, the Kel treated Halash's former subjects as refugees and provided them with supplies and medical care, separating the warlord's child slaves into Vidona orphanages where they would be housed and educated.

## References

1. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 23
2. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Hexarchate (And Heptarchate) Timeline
3. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapters 23,30
Kel Hapo Nar

Commander **Kel Hapo Nar** was a Kel bannermoth commander who served during the Siege of the Fortress of Scattered Needles. He appears in Ninefox Gambit.

## History

When the null swarm used heretical formations during the assault on the Fortress after its shields were taken down, Hapo Nar had to relieve his executive officer for reacting poorly to the heretical formations.
Jedao Two

The following content contains plot or ending spoilers. Read with caution!

**Jedao Two**, also known as Shuos Jedao, is a reconstruction of the original Shuos Jedao. He appears in Revenant Gun and in the forthcoming novella Glass Cannon (Hexarchate Stories, 2019).

## Appearance and Personality

Jedao possesses the memories of a seventeen-year-old cadet, his predecessor, but his body is several decades older. He has a knack for video games and a strong sense of irony, and sees through the apparent friendliness of the tyrant hexarch Nirai Kujen.

## History

Jedao was reconstructed by Kujen to command an army of Kel with the goal of recapturing the fractured hexarchate on his behalf. Jedao was given a command moth, which he named the *Revenant*.

Hated by the Kel soldiers under his command for a massacre he can't remember committing, Jedao is hunted by Ajewen Cheris, who is on a one-woman mission to destroy Kujen and end the hexarchate for good.
An Evening's Offering

**An Evening's Offering** is a flashfic set in the Machineries of Empire universe. It was published by Yoon Ha Lee on his Dreamwidth account, written for Rachel L. to the prompt "Jedao + vacation."

## Synopsis

On a luxurious fourteen-day vacation in the cloud-city of Sfesh, Major General Shuos Jedao finds his chief of staff, Kel Gized, at his door with whisky. The two banter about the suite's bad liquor, the last time Jedao tried to cook something en flambé -- dessert had been "in the way" when Jedao was showing another Kel how to jury-rig a grenade, resulting in Jedao needing a partial facial reconstruction -- and the Kel way of opening a bottle without an opener. Gized declares her intent to find out how drunk Jedao needs to be before she can beat him at jeng-zai, and, over Jedao's doubts that she brought enough alcohol, opens the bottle and pours.

## Trivia

* Jedao's facial reconstruction is mentioned again in Revenant Gun and given a different explanation in Silence.

## Links

* Full flashfic at the author's Dreamwidth account.

## References

1. ↑ An Evening's Offering
2. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 1
3. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Silence
Haussen system

The **Haussen system** is a star system in the heptarchate and hexarchate. It is mentioned in The Battle of Candle Arc and in Ninefox Gambit.

## History

General Shuos Jedao ordered his swarm to travel to the Haussen system, appearing to retreat toward repairs and safety, and then made a detour to Smokewatch 33-67 before proceeding to Candle Arc to battle the Lanterners.

Over 300 years later, General Kel Marish was court-martialed for "overly creative interpretation of orders" while fighting the Haussen heretics, and successfully shouted the charge down.

Vahenz afrir dai Noum observed the Haussen as having bureaus with overlapping purviews, an organizational design flaw which led to bureucratically "stabbing one hand with the other."

## References

1. ↑ The Battle of Candle Arc
2. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
3. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 23
Forever Minus a Day

**Forever Minus a Day** was a bannermoth in the heptarchate. It appears in Ninefox Gambit.

## History

*Forever Minus a Day* was part of an assault swarm sent to retake the heretically subverted Fortress of Scattered Needles. Like all the other bannermoths in the swarm, it did not return.

Scans from the Kel cindermoth *Unspoken Law* suggested that, based on correlation of the assault team's formants, *Forever* might be the second bannermoth in a scout swarm sent from the Fortress. Commander Kel Nerevor, who went to Kel Academy with *Forever's* commander, was outraged, and hoped he had made a good accounting of himself before his moth was taken. General Shuos Jedao privately declined to make assumptions about who was commanding the stolen moth.

Along with the other five moths in the scout swarm, the moth that might have been *Forever* bannered with a Liozh emblem. The swarm then ran into a kaleidoscope bomb, which resulted in a swarm of 100 phantom bannermoths based on the original five. Ultimately, the cindermoth *Sincere Greeting* used its erasure cannon to punch through the second bannermoth's drive array; the fifth, which was slaved to the second, went silent as well, along with all phantoms related to them. The second bannermoth sent a final message toward the Fortress before going silent, but the message was not captured by the Kel, who then cindered all the original moths in the swarm except the fourth.

## References

1. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 8
2. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 9
Fissure

The **Fissure** is a border region of disputed space between the Protectorate and the Compact. It is described in Revenant Gun.

## Geography

The Fissure follows the border between the Compact and Protectorate. Starting at the Blue Heron border, it follows nearly the whole border of the Concerto March, skips straight to the Gray Marches, cuts between Nran and Wolf Hall and passes Khaio to reach the Entangled March, and avoids the Fortress of Scattered Needles and the Footbreak system to skirt the march's border with the Stabglass and Severed Marches to the border of Hafn space.

## History

After the broadcast of the revised calendar, the Compact and Protectorate contested the border region dividing them. Smaller states also arose along the disputed line, taking advantage of disorder and calendrical rot, and the high calendar lost its dominance over the calendrical terrain.

Hexarch Nirai Kujen's plan to restore the historical borders of the hexarchate involved realigning the Fissure to the high calendar, starting at Isteia System and expanding into the Concerto March.

## References

1. ↑ Hexarchate Map
2. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 7
Kel Chau

Commander **Kel Chau** is a Kel soldier who is mentioned in The Battle of Candle Arc.

## History

General Shuos Jedao had a conversation with Chau about move orders after being assigned to what was left of General Kel Najhera's swarm. Jedao recalled the conversation when facing Commander Kel Menowen's doubt that the small, battered swarm should fight back instead of running for help, "specifically the pinched look around Chau's eyes." He guessed that Chau would agree with Menowen about flight being the best plan.

Later, when told by General Kel Khiruev that he couldn't possibly hope to prevail against the hexarchs, Jedao recalled that that was what Commander Chau had said going into Candle Arc.

## References

1. ↑ The Battle of Candle Arc
2. ↑ Raven Strategem, Chapter 10
Kel Peo

General **Kel Peo** is a Kel general who served at the Vonner Salient during the second year of the Compact. He is mentioned in Revenant Gun.

## History

A loyal Kel and a good soldier with tactical experience, Peo spent several months contesting attempts by one of Protector-General Kel Inesser's generals to take the Vonner Salient, a system especially rich in materials needed for raising voidmoths. Finding himself in a losing position, Peo sent a tactical report to High General Kel Brezan by way of General Kel Khiruev, asking whether to cede the Salient to Inesser's troops. After consultation with Brezan and General Devenay Ragath, Khiruev returned orders for Peo to use fungal canisters on the nutrient-rich system's orbiting platforms, denying the crucial materials to Inesser.

## Trivia

* As Peo was not required to consult Brezan for recommendations, he may have done so out of habit as a substitute for consulting Kel Command.
City of Ravens Feasting

The **City of Ravens Feasting**, a coastal city on the planet Bonepyre, was the childhood home where Ajewen Cheris was raised by her parents Dzera and Derow. It is mentioned in Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem, and appears in the short stories The River Soldier, Birthdays, The Robot's Math Lessons, and Cheris and the Sea.

## Description

A port on a small peninsula, the City of Ravens Feasting was on Bonepyre's second-largest continent. A river, associated with the tale of the river soldier, ran through the city, and a shuttle line provided access to a sandy seashore tended to by servitors and alive with gulls and terns; dried anchovies and shrimp crackers are native snacks in the area. The Kel have a file summarizing the City: a dry, sterile list of facts.

Residents used the eight-day week, since the hexarchate did not regulate the length of weeks. The city schedules its weather, including rain and snow.

The majority of Mwennin and Mwen-dal speakers in the city were concentrated in a ghetto area, though others lived throughout the municipality.

True to its name, ravens throng the city, wheeling through the sky and leaving oracle tracks in the dust.

## History

A custom of throwing non-metal rings into the river dates back to ancient times, when the river soldier protected the city from outside raiders but could not intervene in a two-generation civil war among its people.

When Cheris was five years old, her family moved from the city's Mwennin ghetto to a small house nearer to the sea. The family lived by a park and Cheris could hear a river from her house, which had a small garden where she birdwatched as a child.

Cheris used to tell Kel servitors, including Sparrow 2, stories about the City's ravens.

## Trivia

* An eight-day week is also used on Krauwer 5.

## References

1. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 7
2. ↑ The River Soldier
3. ↑ The Robot's Math Lessons
4. ↑ Cheris and the Sea
5. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 4
6. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 1
7. ↑ Cheris and the Sea
8. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 6
9. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 20
10. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 4
11. ↑ The River Soldier
12. ↑ Birthdays
13. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 20
14. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 7
15. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 16
16. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 4
17. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 5
Birthdays

**Birthdays** is a flashfic set in the Machineries of Empire universe. It was published by Yoon Ha Lee on his Dreamwidth account, written for JT to the prompt "hexarchate, birth dates." It will appear in Hexarchate Stories (2019).

## Summary

When Ajewen Cheris was a child, her family moved out of the Mwennin ghetto to a house elsewhere in the City of Ravens Feasting. Cheris, who was good at math, had previously liked studying how the Mwennin calendar and feast-days were different from the high calendar, and had been only faintly aware of how dangerous it was to practice rituals from her own culture's calendar in the hexarchate. The night before her sixth birthday, she had a hard time falling asleep, anticipating the special pastries and old, secret songs that marked Mwennan birthdays in the old neighborhood.

When morning came, however, her mother and father sorrowfully explained that their family's Mwennan birthdays could no longer be celebrated: it was too risky. Not quite understanding the depth of their sadness but wanting to be brave for her mother, Cheris asked if there could be extra pastries on the high calendar birthday, and her mother provided them every year from then until Cheris left for Kel Academy.

## Trivia

* Full flashfic on the author's Dreamwidth account.

## References

1. ↑ Birthdays
2. ↑ Author's blog: Hexarchate Stories due in June 2019
3. ↑ Birthdays
Drowned March

The **Drowned March** is one of the marches of space in the hexarchate. It is mentioned in Ninefox Gambit.

## History

The sergeant of Heron Company's Squadron Four, with whom Kel Cheris had eaten at high table for years, told stories of his service in the Drowned March and at Makhtu's Feathered Bridge. During the company's action on Dredge, the sergeant refused to obey orders for a nonstandard formation, resulting in Squadron Four being fatally excluded from the company.
Kel Chion

> "*How do we know they won't just blow out the passage, sir?*"
> ― Kel Chion
>
>

**Kel Chion** was a Kel soldier who served during the retaking of the Fortress of Scattered Needles. He appears in Ninefox Gambit.

## History

Chion, who had a knack for annoying questions, served on Platoon Two under Lieutenant Kel Hren. As the platoon proceeded toward the location of the corrosion gradient generators, Chion expressed worry that the heretics would blow out the passage they were using to approach, and, despite Hren's sergeant's disapproval, was assured that the passage had been selected for its important structural supports which the heretics could not risk damaging.

Hren then ordered Chion to help Kel Huo with her pack, after which Platoon Two collided with Captain Kel Miyaud's company, proceeded ahead of it, and ran into the first use of the heretics' amputation gun.
Valler 4

**Valler 4**, formerly known as **Erehanno** and other names, is a planet in the hexarchate. Notable as the birth-world of Hexarch Nirai Kujen, it is mentioned in Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun.

## Geography

Valler 4 is in the **Valler system**, a conflicted system in the center of the hexarchate.

## History

Threadbare Shuos records describe Valler 4's traumatic history, including the changing of its name twice within nine hundred years. During Kujen's childhood, the planet was held by the warlord Halash, who was killed in a heptarchate takeover around the year 355. After the Kel bombed and looted Halash's lavish stronghold, his former subjects were treated as refugees and provided with supplies and medical care, with the warlord's child concubines separated into Vidona orphanages and educated as heptarchate citizens.

## Trivia

* Valler 4 is not named in the text, but its position and two of its names can be found on the Hexarchate Map.
* The planet may also have been the birth world of the child Meveri.

## References

1. ↑ Hexarchate Map
2. ↑ Raven Stratgem, Chapter 11
3. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 23
4. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Hexarchate (And Heptarchate) Timeline
5. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapters 23,30
6. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 6
Kel Miyaud

> "*Oh, bother--*"
> ― Kel Miyaud
>
>

**Kel Miyaud** was a Kel soldier who served during the retaking of the Fortress of Scattered Needles. He appears in Ninefox Gambit.

## History

Miyaud's company, proceeding toward the location of the corrosion gradient generators, ran into Platoon Two under Lieutenant Kel Hren in a narrow passage. After some confusion of too many Kel in a tight place, Miyaud gave way, stashing his Kel in side-passages and empty structures as Hren proceeded ahead.

Both companies ran into the first use of the heretics' amputation gun. Miyaud, despite losing both arms, managed to inform Brevet General Kel Cheris via Colonel Kel Ragath that the gun had been fired twice from different angles. His message arrived in a garbled, bubbling voice, with captions and a typo. Scoffing that the heretics couldn't take his arms twice, Miyaud reported that they were approaching and that invariant guns were in use. Then, over long bursts of automatic fire, he said, "Oh, bother--" and was cut off.
Shuos Teng

Analyst **Shuos Teng** was a Shuos soldier who served during the Siege of the Fortress of Scattered Needles. Teng appears in Ninefox Gambit.

## History

Captain Shuos Ko introduced Teng to Brevet General Kel Cheris along with the rest of the Shuos team. Teng's "bow was all anxiety."

## Trivia

* Teng's pronouns do not appear in the text.
A Labyrinth of Foxes

**This page contains spoilers for Revenant Gun.**

**A Labyrinth of Foxes** is a popular drama series about the life of Shuos Jedao. It is seen in Revenant Gun.

## Description

One of a very long list of dramas about Jedao, *A Labyrinth of Foxes* is composed of 240 half-hour episodes, of which approximately eight are considered the most controversial. Two of these include "The Battle of Candle Arc," whose warmoth special effects are terrible, and "Dueling Foxes," in which Jedao and Heptarch Shuos Khiaz duel with calendrical swords while shirtless and then seduce each other. The actor who played Jedao did not resemble him, lacking scars and having a deeper voice than the original.

## History

While trying to learn more about the life he had forgotten, Jedao searched for documentaries, discovered *A Labyrinth of Foxes* on the long list of dramas, and watched parts of two controversial episodes to see what it was like. He hated the music, found the actor who played him attractive but the episode titles unoriginal, and, with no memory of having met the historical Khiaz, turned "Dueling Foxes" off while laughing himself out of breath at the seduction scene.
Kel Dhanneth

Major **Kel Dhanneth**, born **Eurikhos Dhanneth**, is a Kel soldier who appears in Revenant Gun.

## Personal Life

Dhanneth was one of four children. His parents, who had Kel ties, pushed him into faction service despite his desire to become an artist instead. Once married to an alt diplomat, who had quarreled with him over his refusal to remove a tattoo of a tiger rampant from his back, Dhanneth is now divorced with one adult child with whom he has not communicated for over a decade. He is sixty-five years old.

## Trivia

* Dhanneth found honey-sesame the most tolerable flavor of Kel ration bar.
* Dhanneth will appear as "The Moon" in Hexarchate Tarot. The card stands for illusion, self-deception, and wishful thinking; reversed, it represents comfort and self-knowledge.

## References

1. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 9
2. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 27
3. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 9
4. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 13
5. ↑ Author's remarks
6. ↑ Hexarchate Tarot: Major Arcana
Cheris and the Sea

The following content contains plot or ending spoilers. Read with caution!

**Cheris and the Sea** is a flashfic set in the Machineries of Empire universe. It was written for Dreamwidth user sovay and first published by Yoon Ha Lee on his Dreamwidth account.

While the first six parts of the story take place before Ninefox Gambit, the seventh is set after the as-yet-unreleased novella Glass Cannon and contains certain ending spoilers.

## Synopsis

The ficlet centers around Ajewen Cheris and her experiences of different seas throughout her life. The first six parts involve the sea near the City of Ravens Feasting, her encounters with a servitor there, visits to a Kel naval base and the Fossil Sea, seafood eaten in a seaside town, and care packages sent by her mother and father.

In the seventh part, Cheris and Jedao return to Bonepyre in an unnamed voidmoth, which lands on the sea. Leaving Servitor 1491625 with the moth, Cheris and Jedao set out for shore in a small dingy as Cheris confronts her memories of her home planet. Though unwilling to consider staying on Bonepyre, Cheris takes off her shoes upon landing and runs joyfully down the shining shore.

## Trivia

* The servitor from the ficlet's second part is featured in The Robot's Math Lessons.

## Links

Full flashfic on author's Dreamwidth account.
Kel Mieng

> "*Sir, Captain Mieng, Battalion Three, Company Two. If you need another unit to hold, we can hold.*"
> ― Captain Kel Mieng
>
>

Captain **Kel Mieng** is a Kel soldier who served during the Siege of the Fortress of Scattered Needles. She appears in Ninefox Gambit.

## Description

Mieng is a steady, competent captain who cares little about "dried-up bits of history" but is willing to go over her battalion commander's head to offer support for a friend's company.

## History

Mieng went to Kel Academy with Kel Belleren. She was once locked in a bank while visiting a mutual friend with him when someone touched a priceless ink painting and triggered an alarm lockdown.

During the Siege, Mieng led Company Two in Infantry Battalion Three, which had been assigned to launch a mock assault on the Drummers' Ward. Mieng's company, armed with fireworks instead of real mortars, was assigned to take and hold the Hall of Stochastic Longings. Mieng looked forward to catching up with Major Belleren, whose company was in the van, afterwards.

Company Two held the Hall for 6.6 hours, during which Platoons Two and Three hunted civilians in the area. The company gave way in measured stages, taking the decoys with them, when the heretics arrived in force.

When Colonel Ragath notified the battalion that all but six of its companies were to report to hoppers for pickup, Mieng noticed that Major Belleren's company was one of those staying behind. She contacted Ragath directly, bypassing her battalion commander, to volunteer support, but Ragath explained that the six battalions were being left behind to die as the minimum number of casualties that would convince the heretics their attack had been real. Refusing Mieng's offer of martyrdom, he instructed her to follow orders and retreat to the hoppers with her company. Mieng did so, but resented, for the first time in a long time, how formation instinct constrained her.
Eggshell

**Eggshell** is a Kel soldier who served during the Siege of the Fortress of Scattered Needles. He appears in Ninefox Gambit.

## History

During ground operations in the Umbrella Ward, Eggshell, along with Trigger and the rest of Lieutenant Kel Mikev's platoon, were assigned to the ward's forward section near Gate 3-12 after fighting to keep it pressurized while the heretics attempted to suck out the atmosphere. Eggshell complained about grit getting through his suit's filters and into his eyes.

After being told by Mikev to stay under cover, the platoon experienced a crawling physical sensation coming from their weapons, which increased over time until Mikev ordered the weapons discarded as the corrosion gradient began to fossilize them. Mikev's captain was aware of the issue and his platoon was ordered to hold position.
How the Andan Court

**How the Andan Court** is a flashfic by Yoon Ha Lee, set in the Machineries of Empire universe. Written for Nancy Sauer, it appeared in The Fox's Tower And Other Tales and will reappear in Hexarchate Stories (2019).

## Synopsis

Four paragraphs written from the perspective of an unnamed suitor who wishes to court a lover with roses, but, without adequate knowledge of the petal language, must offer a bouquet of words instead.

## Trivia

* From the context, it appears that the suitor's desired lover is an Andan.
* The author describes the piece as flashpiece on the nature of desire.

## References

1. ↑ Author's website
2. ↑ Author's blog: Hexarchate Stories due in June 2019
3. ↑ Author's website
Dzuro

**This page contains spoilers for Revenant Gun.**

Premier **Dzuro** is the elected premier of the Compact. She is mentioned in Revenant Gun.

## History

Dzuro was the elected premier at some time before the ninth year of the Compact. While High General Kel Brezan felt his own role in the government was more symbolic than hers, she approved of his choosing the Compact's Bell and Scroll as his emblem instead of registering a more personal one, and sent him to represent the Compact to Protector-General Kel Inesser because he would be able to read her body language better as long as he could keep his temper.

Inesser's offer to the Compact included a place in her government for Dzuro, on the premise that there was plenty of work to go round.
Blades for All Occasions

**Blades for All Occasions** is a sword shop on a space station in the hexarchate. It appears in the short story Sword-Shopping.

## Description

Blades for All Occasions is located in a dome-city with aleatory weather patterns. The shop boasts a fluttering banner of inked silk outside and an unnaturally Kel-colored falcon on a perch inside, its primary feathers shaded black to red with gaudy metallic gold bands at the tips. The shop assistant is prim observer of potential customers, not above sharing a quiet look of amusement with those accompanying enthusiastic customers.

Available for sale is a dizzying array of bladed weapons, from tactical knives to fancy daggers to machetes, and several displays of calendrical sword hilts.

## History

After saving up for a calendrical sword since entering Kel Academy, Kel cadet Ajewen Cheris visited the shop with her then-girlfriend Linnis Orua.

Inside, Cheris admired an extremely fancy gold-chased voidmetal hilt with an unusual basket shape, fit only for an excellent duelist and so expensive that no price tag accompanied it. Orua, however, drew her attention to a different display, much plainer but faintly iridescent like a raven's feather. Cheris picked one with the first digits of the base of the natural logarithm incorporated in the texture of its metal.
Aughen

The **Aughens** were a heretic faction in the heptarchate. They are mentioned in Ninefox Gambit.

## History

The Aughens controlled a stretch of territory near the Blue Heron border. Though they made few demands and asked mainly to be left alone, the heptarchate refused to cede their territory on the grounds that it would leave the border vulnerable.

The campaign quickly became ugly, since the Aughens' honorable behavior in battle gained sympathy among the Kel.

Lieutenant General Shuos Jedao served in the Aughen campaign the year before his promotion to full general. He was forced to court-martial and execute Kel cowards and deserters after every battle.

## Trivia

* The Aughen campaign took place three years before Jedao's treasonous massacre at Hellspin Fortress.
Gwa Reality

The **Gwa Reality** is a heretical regime outside the heptarchate, home of the Gwa-an people. It is visited in the short story Extracurricular Activities.

## Geography

The Gwa Reality is adjacent to the Taurag Republic and borders the hexarchate along a span of space between the Pale Fracture and the Ausser March.

Both Du Station and the planet Mwe Enh, for which an eponymous treaty was named, are in the Gwa Reality.

## Overview

"Gwa Reality" is the heptarchate's name for the realm of the Gwa-an. Most heptarchate linguists agree that the word translated as "Reality" refers to "the Gwa-an belief that all dreams took place in the same noosphere, connecting the dreamers, and that even inanimate objects dreamed." The Gwa-an version of Doctrine is called the Poetics; unlike the heptarchate, the Gwa-an debate their doctrine publicly, believing that this strengthens the polity.

The Gwa Reality shares a border with the heptarchate and are accustomed to its numerological superstitions. While approved cultural items are traded at designated stations under the Treaty of Mwe Enh, the Gwa-an experience periodic political upheavals, resulting in successive elected governments which vary in position towards heptarchate interests. Spies and deep-cover operatives provide additional intelligence to each regime, often with illicit drugs or other contraband as distractions from their actual missions.

Prostitution is a major offense under the Gwa-an penal code, mandating remedial counseling. Priests are in charge of the penal system. In keeping with the Gwa-an ritual purity aesthetic, transgressors are secured in humanitarian environments.

## History

Near the end of a period of political positivity toward the heptarchate, Shuos Jedao infiltrated Du Station to retrieve the crew of the Moonsweet Blossom. Discovering that the crew had been executed, except for a defector, Jedao retrieved the *Blossom* and the defector and returned to the heptarchate, leaving Du Station with inoperative turret levels clogged with solidified variable-coefficient lubricant.

Hexarch Nirai Kujen judged the Gwa-an unlikely to be an imminent threat to the hexarchate's calendrical stability, as they usually kept to themselves.

## References

1. ↑ Hexarchate Map
2. ↑ Extracurricular Activities
3. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 20
Fossil Sea

The **Fossil Sea** is a sea made of bone dust on a planet in the hexarchate. It is described in Cheris and the Sea.

## History

A couple of centuries before the Siege at the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a weapon from the Kel Arsenal turned an enemy army to crumbled bone-dust in the process of the hexarchate's subjugation of a planet, forming the Fossil Sea, a horizon-spanning bowl of powdery dust where the army once stood. The dust whispers and moves in eerie tides and became a well-known tourist attraction, though the yellow-white dust haze above it necessitated air masks for safety. Visitors sometimes took vials of dust as souvenirs, a custom Ajewen Cheris thought disrespectful.

As a junior lieutenant, Cheris visited the Fossil Sea on her first leave while posted to the planet. Though wearing an air-mask, she thought she could hear the dead sadly singing from the whispering dust. Feeling that no hexarchate tradition was appropriate to the setting, Cheris did not take a dust vial but haltingly sang an old Mwennin prayer-chant, a small act of heresy to honor the fallen.

## Trivia

* At the time when Cheris visited the Fossil Sea, the continent she was posted to had a history of student uprisings and heretical puppet shows. One stock character she was guiltily fond of, Bird-Brain, had a head made of bright parrot feathers with glued-on eyes.
Eshpatan

**Eshpatan** is the homeworld of the Shparoi people, and is significant for being the birthplace of Shuos Jedao. The world is mentioned in Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem, and is the location of the short stories Omens, Honesty, Bunny, A Belated Blessing, and Silence.

## History

**Old Eshpar** was the first settlement on the planet, which was later absorbed into the heptarchate. Some parts of its culture, such as the Shadow Theater, were preserved by the Andan to sweeten the transition.

During the early 800s by the high calendar, agricultural researcher Garach Ledana raised Jedao and his brother and sister on Eshpatan.

Around the year 950, before the reorganization of the heptarchate into the hexarchate, the planet was taken by the Hafn in a border dispute. It is no longer part of the hexarchate, and lies in Hafn space outside the Crescendo March.

## Trivia

* While Eshpatan is never named in the text, the name appears on the hexarchate map.
* The author remarks that Old Eshpar unofficially "bears a suspicious resemblance to the shape of the state of Texas."

## References

1. ↑ A Belated Blessing
2. ↑ Omens
3. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Hexarchate (And Heptarchate) Timeline
4. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Hexarchate (And Heptarchate) Timeline
5. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 10
6. ↑ Hexarchate Map
7. ↑ Hexarchate Map
8. ↑ A Belated Blessing
Gloves

**Gloves** is a short story set in the Machineries of Empire universe. It appears in Hexarchate Stories.

## Summary

During repairs to his command moth, Shuos Jedao, barred from the local gambling establishments due to his knack for winning, books a night at a local brothel. Finding his assigned prostitute, Kio, dressed in seductive mimicry of a Kel uniform, Jedao makes a confidential request to be dominated, indulging the taboo fraternization kink which he prefers kept out of the club's official records. After he leaves the next morning, Kio communicates Jedao's preferences to an unknown party, noting that the Shuos hexarch was right about his tastes.

## Trivia

* *Gloves* takes place after Jedao's promotion to Brigadier General.
* One of the three previously-unreleased items in Hexarchate Stories (along with Silence and Glass Cannon), it was first described as "PWP: Jedao at a brothel."

## References

1. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Gloves
2. ↑ Author's blog: Hexarchate Stories due in June 2019