Epigraphs

Epigraphs are listed first by sources alphabetically, and then within that category by chapter order.

## Anonymous

### Chapter 17

> There are two places in the world I have come to truly despise with a dread passion worthy of the Nameless Fate itself. The sitting room of my mother-in-law… and those dark valleys in the shadow of Yin Eclipse. At least where my mother-in-law is concerned I can be certain that the fates might answer my prayers, because they are certainly blind before the path to that accursed mountain.
>
>

*~Anonymous Hunter Bureau Official.*

### Chapter 47

> Where the fuck did these obnoxious mushrooms come from! Certainly they were never part of MY design! It’s a plot, I swear! A slander, mendacious! They all have it in for me! In for me I say! and I’ll fucking smite any bastard who claims otherwise!
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>

*~ Outraged entity of petty and mysterious origin.*

> Burn them with ‘Heaven Fire', sear them with ‘Void Lightning’ and pulverize them ‘Demon Thunder’. Even use ‘Manifest Miracle’ or ‘Unlimited Wish’ if you have to! Just be sure they are beyond dead by the time you are done. It is the only way. Also, no physical proof of termination by supreme order, recorded images are sufficient.
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*~ Official stance on the Eldritch Spore Plague from the Society of Adventures for the Northern Continent of Aertha Antiqua.*

> I for one, hail our new Fungus Overlords, long may they rule! Equality for All! Long May they Spore!
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>

*~A misguided fool, shortly before assimilation.*

### Chapter 49

> “The biggest problem with Heaven's Path practitioners, which is also in some ways their greatest strength, is that if you keep kicking them when they are down, yet never actually finish them off decisively, their talent for overturning all expectations is without compare. In this regard, they make for the best stones to cast at any problem where collateral damage is the least of your worries.”
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*~attributor unknown*

## Anonymous Excerpts

### Chapter 16

> …Power acquired at birth is as much a curse as a blessing, so the sages say. Nowhere is this seen better than in the behaviour of the scions of most Noble and Heavenly Clans when they venture out into the world. Their path, to their ears accompanied by trumpets and salutations, is to the eyes of the common man and woman a trail of mayhem, wrought by their unshakable determination that they, and only they, are the masters of any place in which they happen to find themselves.
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*Excerpt from – ‘Morality and Birthright’*

*~Anonymous Scholar.*

### Old Chapter 19

> ...The marvels wrought beneath the Evergrove Mountains by generations of mages would, many say, grow to eclipse the very thing they sought to understand through their centuries of work. They turned a desolate series of ancient mines into a treasure house of knowledge, built amid marvels both natural and magical.
> It is a shame therefore that in the end, all their work was returned to naught. One wonders if some future generation, millennia hence might find their ruins in turn, and create some even greater marvel seeking to unravel their riddle. At the very least we can only pray that they should not fall prey to the villainy of our late, much unlamented former ruler of Meltras that has marred this day. Then again, perhaps it is only fitting that it is the robber Dukes of Meltras, Belthorne, Renlath and Renborin that have consigned a brilliant jewel of our nation into a bloody memorial to insatiable avarice and ruinous pride.
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*Excerpt from a Pamphlet speaking out against the Duke of Meltras.*

*~Anonymous author. Executed for sedition.*

### Chapter 34

> ...Karma, Fate, Destiny, whatever you want to call them are all, really, once you start to strip away the crap people assign to them by mistake or ill design, aspects of the same thing. It would not be wrong to view them as a kind of fundamental force that works in both obvious and rather oblique ways. Like electromagnetism, or gravity… or cat memes. Trying to explain how it ‘works’ is more than frequently self-defeating, as we will get onto in a minute. First, I would like you all to consider, as a thought experiment, a seaside village.
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> It is filled with people, animals, buildings and so on, all doing people, animal and building things – and you, today, decide you want to cross the ocean. To do this you need a boat. To build that boat, you need knowledge to do so. You may also need other people to help build and crew it, to supply the materials and so on. But what is important is that the more people in the village that get involved, the more complex the whole thing becomes.
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> So, to get across the sea you have to build a boat. To do that you have to take apart the world you live in, and twist it accordingly. In this case, you must cut trees to make the boat. You must make canvas for the sails. You must grow food so you do not starve, or find some way to get it from others. You must know how to sail the boat you have built, either yourself, or with others. To cross the sea, you also have to go with the natural world. With the winds, the tides, you must know how they work together, know when to fight them, when to go with them. When you set out on your voyage you must know your boat, know how long it will last, and know how your choices will impact it. The longer you voyage, the more this will matter. The more damage the boat will take, irrespective of how good a sailor you are. Misjudge and no matter how excellent you are, how good your preparations, the boat will eventually founder. Be it during the first journey, or the thousandth.
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> So, how does this really relate to these three? Fate, Destiny, Karma? At its simplest level, ‘Destiny’ is the actions of building the boat, getting it crewed and so on. ‘Fate’ is whether you got across the ocean in the end. ‘Karma’ is everything messy that contributed to your status at the end, uncaring of whether you’re sitting on a sandy beach somewhere sipping strong alcohol or drowned.
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> But, if we want to pick at it a bit closer? Well, Fate would be that the timbers were rotten, the rope was weak, a sea monster just happened to be going your way. You cheated your crew, didn’t pay them, stuff like that. If everything is going unhindered, whether you succeed or fail is related to the sum of its parts. In a perfect world, these kind of things are not a bad analogy to Fate in this context. Destiny is the knowledge to build the boat, how your connections were in that village. Were you a rich or a poor man. Liked or hated. Karma… well Karma is the balance between Fate and Destiny it is the sum of the parts framing not just your endeavour, but the circumstances of the whole village from moment to moment.
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> I already see the wiser ones picking up on the key point there. ‘Unhindered'. *Ours* is a somewhat odd place in that regard, in that those at the top have ‘views’ about this. In another land however, maybe the one ruling the village doesn’t like water. Or you simply live in a land with really bad trees for boat building. *Or* maybe only specific people can get the good timber? Only specific people know when the sea monster will come, when the weather is good, and *they* are the ones dispensing that knowledge to the voyagers that they like? And most importantly, they are also the ones deliberately putting holes in the bottom of boats of people they don’t...
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*~Excerpt from ‘A treatise on the Mechanisms of Being.’*

*~Author unknown.*

### Chapter 40

> Evergrove the Fair, jewel of three Duchies.
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> How my heart dreams of your leafy boulevards.
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> To walk among the gardens, to see beauties dance beside its fountains.
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> These ears weep that they cannot hear the music of your taverns or the words of your minstrels.
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> Mine eyes yearn to bask once again in the glory and majesty of your past endeavours.
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> When your men challenged the darkness below, and womenfolk spun miracles in water and gold.
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> Alas, I am here, in these deserts of red death, far from your marble streets and verdant plazas.
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> Only the memory of your fair maidens and beautiful vistas in my mind’s eye.
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> Though my blade is turned to dark deeds and distant woes, I dream of you still, solace of my mind.
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> Keep thee safe, memory of my youth, for someday I shall yet return to you once more.
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*Recollections on Evergrove.*

*~Author Unknown*

### Chapter 42

> The problem with geomancy is that everything is a leading question. To get the right answer from it you must not only know what the right question is, but be keenly aware of what the wrong ones could be. Because, as you seek to get a leg over on the world at large, the world you are trying to scam will perfectly happily follow along with you, nodding and offering its support. Right up until you walk over a cliff, into a dragon’s den or onto someone else’s sword, never seeing the knife you made for your own back in the process, whereupon the world will abscond without a sound, leaving you to wonder right up to the very last how your wonderful plans all came to naught.
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*Excerpt from ‘On the Joys of Divination (or why I burnt down my own temple)’.*

*~ Author unknown.*

### Chapter 67

> Of all the monsters of this, or many other worlds, I have had the misfortune to tangle with over the millennia, neonates – those gluttonous devourers who haunt inauspicious waters – are among the most vexatious. Combining a very human avarice with a bestial strength and a blood-borne favour from the heavens themselves, they are also skilled ambushers. They are highly territorial and operate complex hierarchies over their lesser kin, who frequently bow before them in vast numbers. A nine-headed serpent of this brood is a thing so fearsome that even a Dao Ascension cultivator would step sideways from their path, while even those with as few as three or four heads can bring death and destruction well above their means.
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*Excerpt from ‘The Serpents of Southern Azure’*

*~Author unknown.*

### Chapter 74

> Of those figures who walked out of the wreckage of those first epochs, few inspire such awe and terror as the so-called ‘Ancients of Days’.
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> Most venerated is *‘Spring and Autumn’,* who gave men both a creed to revere and a destination to dream of. She left us the gift of a place of rest and reward.
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> Most mysterious is *‘Original Song’*, who led us from the trees and who walked into shadow and silver to await her children at the end. She left them the gift of paths unknown, horizons unseen.
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> Most feared is *‘Red Dust’*, who took all our sorrows to her heart and crafted from them a dance to lead us on, a journey and a destination that we could be more. Her gift, was the promise that the wage of our actions would determine that destination.
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> Most reviled is ‘*Myriad Gifts*’, who gave to us the means to excel in all things, that we might better know ourselves and prosper. Her gift, was the choice to set aside the path and seek respite from eternal trial.
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> Others there are as well among that generation and who have come since. The Conquering King who codified the ‘Principles of Being’ for all to read, the Philosopher Prince who walked the Samsara of Heaven and Earth, our Heavensent Prince of Peace who spoke of Mercy and Morals. But unknowing and unsought for, it is these four who have exercised us most in our endless days and sleepless nights. Who we curse, reject, beg, pray to and venerate in equal measure while holding up these other, later creeds. For their generation attained something not truly seen before or since. A path needing no Kingdom, desiring no Glory and unfettered by the Eternity, and we, as we are today can only envy and hate them for it in equal measure.
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> For it is we who walked away from them, as much as we wish to deny it, decry it, refute it? It was us, who, with their stolen gifts raised above our heads, the blood of their children still fresh on our hands, the lingering words of their hopes and dreams still echoing in our hearts, who bowed to new masters. Who we raised up in their image, arrogantly believing we had learned everything there was to know, believing that we too, could be the masters of this place.
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> What arrogance we had, back when the world was young and we did not comprehend the meaning of the gilded cage we had wrought.
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Text found within a sealed funerary jar in a Cairo market in 1923 - dated to c. 392 AD

  ~ Author unknown, assumed to be copied from an earlier text.

### Chapter 75

> …On that night, the Festival of the Blue Moon, the whole town was a riot of colour and music as men and women cavorted and danced. At that time, I surely saw many wonders as I wandered through those streets of Jerikhal, with its tall ships and great harbour lit bright as day. Fantastical dishes to wet the tongue, beauties to stir the loins and songs to make your heart race... but looking back now, it is only the words of the dancing street children that linger on.
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> I can recall them still, dressed in faded and thread-bare white, wearing crude paper masks painted with the blue moon and stars… dancing with branches of pilfered laurel and oak, and the very words they sang as adults, myself among them, laughed and tossed them paltry scraps.
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> ‘Death ran into the west,’ they sang, ‘fleeing its dreams’. A nonsense of words it had been, for how could death flee anything? They sang there was a war and a game and death ran on, where ‘death won his war, but his game was lost…’ And after that, they sang ‘war would bring death, but kings would never die.’
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> The people laughed and danced without care and the words should have passed away, forgotten amid the revels – but on the morn three ships came, each bearing dark news in their own fashion. Of a King who had not died, of a war we had won, and then, of a plague brought on by both and thereafter, there was only weeping and sorrow and then death where once there had been song and dance in Jerikhal.
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From the ‘Dream of the Blue Moon’

  Author unknown.

### Chapter 78

> War came to Valinkar unannounced. We knew not what hit us when the Spider Eye tribe rolled out of the depths. For years we had suffered raids from them, petitioned the cities of the coast to send us aid to resist them. Year after year we had lost ground to them, but never, until that day, did we have ‘war’ with them. They came with fire and fury and slaves, a tide of Undren and Ghoblan, bound beneath the mountains to serve.
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> Desperate for aid, we sent pleas to the coast, to Jerikhal, to Urmvar and to Grand Meltras, but all our pleas were met with rebuttal. Some denied our plight, some doubted that our little corner of the world was so beset when everything else was falling to ruin and others regretted that they had not the manpower to send for they were killing Ur’Vash and Ur’Inan on the Great Plains, as the church *commanded*.
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> We held that gate, Valinkar, upon the waters, for 91 days. 91 days of slaughter before our gates. Our whole land we turned against the horde. Our farms became killing fields; our waterways, paths into the afterlife for uncounted souls; and our walls the cliff upon which their lives were ruined.
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> On the 92nd day, today, we have finally understood. Ere the day is out, I will be dead. Any who could not fight, have already taken their own lives and their bodies are enshrined as Death Watch within the deeps of our city. Now, we will make our last stand, against the true darkness. We, who came here from the Eternal City a thousand years ago, will become Immortals at last – commemorated by our words in places like this.
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> Nameless King, undeserving of legacy, I, Varus Emberkaid, Lord of Valinkar, Master of War, curse you. You and yours have ruined us.
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  ~Recorded from the walls of a hidden tomb in Valinkar by persons unknown.

### Chapter 82

> While Valinkar drowned in Evil and the Daughters of the Isles rampaged through our northern reaches, amid the common folk arose a holy daughter, one who had claimed to hear the word of our lord. She struck a great victory at Delbar and then at Meltras and liberated dozens of towns in a single campaign, spreading her name widely as a hero of the common folk.
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> Thereafter, claiming revelation, she, took for her banner the sign of six golden eyes of holy manifestation, shining like the sun, and was hailed as Saintess by Tyrus the Wise, Lord Bishop of Meltras. Rousing the downtrodden populace to fervour, she swept down the coast, overturning the forces of the Sea Peoples in a furious assault that culminated with the liberation Jerikhal itself where she urged all the faithful to join her in the fight against the darkness in our lands.
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> Our surviving leaders, believing themselves suddenly in the superior position, a Saintess emerged and the will of the common folk once again resurgent, feted her and showered her with honours. Caught up in their fervour, they ignored old counsel and cheered as she led the good folk of our land to execute the heretic prisoners of the sea peoples before the ruins of the great cathedral of Jerikhal. Those few who remained, she turned over to Consul Nervral, son of the disgraced Neron, who had now landed with his legions, seeking to redeem his grandfather’s legacy through deeds of war. Then, mustering a great host from our lands, she marched for Valinkar, declaring an end to darkness in our lands and prophesying its deliverance from darkness upon the 91st day of the siege.
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Excerpt from the incomplete text of ‘The Broken Dream’

  Author Unknown.

## Anonymous Poetry

### Chapter 19

> Oh Misty Jasmine Days,
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> How you linger long in the memory.
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> Those gentle moments we spent together,
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> Between sunset and sunrise,
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> The warmth of your laughter,
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> The caress of your words,
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> The calming songs you sing,
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> I slumber in your embrace.
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> Awaken to your gentle fragrance.
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> Oh Misty Jasmine,
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> For these Halcyon days,
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> I can only dream.
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Poem in Ancient Easten, carved on a stele in Misty Jasmine Shrine.

~Author Unknown.

### Old Chapter 22

> “It comes! Thirsting on our fear… it is in our hearts, in our homes, in our very souls… Devourer… Gnawer, May you be cursed by God for what you have wrought here!”
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> “Dark Daughter, Divider of all, protect this supplicant’s house from the Devourer.”
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> “God is dead! He will not save us.”
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> *“SuICide? sUicIde!? SUiCiDe?!?”*
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*~Records of graffiti uncovered in ancient ruins far below the City of Evergrove, preserved in the Enkellion Vault, St Roberta’s Academy.*

### Chapter 31

> *Strange is the dusk where the dark stars rise*
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> *And devouring eyes, like moons, circle through starless skies.*
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> *But stranger still is the song that those rain bringers sing.*
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> *Where flap in tatters the standard of my dread king.*
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> *Where voice is dead and tears unsung, must die unheard.*
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> *When all have laid aside their disguise but he.*
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> *At that last shall you see his pallid mask.*
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> *Only then will you know the stranger that has entered in.*
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*Writings seized and sealed by the Enkellion Vault, Saint Roberta’s Academy*

*~By Anonymous (deceased upon recovery of writing)*

### Chapter 46

> Mother of Earth you set the Stage.
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> Such a gift, you lift men up from shadow this day.
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> Mother of Fire, you illuminate the Path.
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> Such a blaze of glory, to kindle the soul and raise the heart.
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> Mother of Blood, you lead the Dance.
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> Such gaiety and vigour to lead us on, for days and nights.
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> Mother of Sky, you reflect our Dreams.
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> Such hope, such sorrow, to-
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> Mother of Water, you-
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*Partial poem from an ancient stone tablet found in ruins near Mount Snow Jade*

*~recorded by an anonymous scholar.*

### Book 2 Epilogue

> Hell is what we make it, as is the darkness of our hearts.
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Unknown sage, Era of the Shan.

### Chapter 94

> Out of the dark she came, out of the North.
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> Amid the storms howling, black wings to break the day.
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> Upon that final shore our stand was made,
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> Our shining spears, our dark shields arrayed.
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> With golden hair and twisted words,
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> Our Lords deceived, our counsel bereaved.
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> Her kith and kin, the daughters of wild blades,
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> Our noble scions, with their bright pennants waylaid.
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> Out of the east she came, red hair blazing at the gate of day,
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> Lady of hearth, cattle and crops, sovereign of that fertile plain.
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> Between land and sea we made our stand.
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> Our hopes and dreams held up to match her blood-drenched hand,
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> Until at the last we were betrayed.
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> Within our midst, that cruellest dark-haired maid displayed,
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> She who delights in frenzy and the havoc of the blade.
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> Our ranks she flayed, our hopes unmade.
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> With a single cry, we saw our hundred heroes die.
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> There at last, we saw once more,
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> In truth, her throne upon that windswept shore.
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> For as their pipes and drums did play,
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> So was the nightmare of our broken dreams remade.
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> Our fate cast low, our hearts unsound,
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> The doom of men, in bloody ruin bound.
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> The shadow of death, our lord cast down,
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> That Nightmare Queen, returned once more.
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The Matter of Mortal Solace

  ~ Original Authors unknown – text preserved in the Enkellion Vault, Evergrove.

### Chapter 98

> Dead are the pools where the dark stars fell,
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> Where our tears do linger as sorrowing wells.
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> Therein, amid those tattered towers,
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> Spears of gods cast down,
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> When they grew men and beast together like flowers.
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> Who can say what lingers there,
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> Where lament only we who remember Hyas well.
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Fragment of ancient poetry.

  Recovered in 1932, in a sealed lead box from a Bagdad market.

### Chapter 102

> Out of the Dark, it came,
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> Out of the Long Night,
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> A Dread shadow across the face of day.
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> All that beheld it fell still.
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> Heroes wept before it.
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> Kings crumbled to it.
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> Gods cowered to it.
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> The fires of our greed died to it.
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> And there, at the last, within the ashes of that era, we knew it.
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> In its silence, beheld the grave of light, life and hope.
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> The truth of our great achievement laid bare,
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> That we, too, could be the masters of this place,
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> The death of the golden dream.
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> And when it passed, we, too… passed with it.
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Inscription on a stone during excavations of the Forum Romanum 1921, Rome.

  ~ Author unknown.

## Aeros of the Eternal City

### Chapter 91

> Such terror those immortals wage; such horrors rend
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> The world's vast concave, when the eternal thrones contend.
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> First the misty-eyed Huntress took the plain,
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> Against the Lord of Light, sovereign of the land.
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> The Master of War his bright blade display'd,
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> Opposed to the Mercenary, war’s triumphant maid.
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> Against old Karolan marched the Dancer of Blades,
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> The scepter’d Daughter, sister of the day,
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> The Bridge Lord, keeper of the eternal gate,
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> All three did duel upon that field of Mars.
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> The Emperor, majesty of heaven, defied.
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> With that most Dread and August Queen, at last in battle stands
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> Lamentation her name with those of heavenly birth,
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> But called Midnight by the sons of earth.
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> The sacred flood that rolls on silver sands;
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> Those dark rivers and fields of gold we saw once more.
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> Such calamity they wrought that day.
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‘Vae Victus’, Book VII

  By Aeros of the Eternal City

## Astoria Belmont

### Chapter 55

> Nobody really 'expects' the Undrenfolk, and yet, really, they should. They are far more invasive and observant than most powers realise, dismissing them as just some mutate rats hyped up on mana. The danger they bring is not so simply fixed with a few pest wards, doughty men with sticks breaking skulls in sewers and a dismissal of worse as rumours and the febrile ravings of those who would cause instability. Undrenfolk walk among us, see us for what we truly are, and hate us for it.
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> In the depths below the City of the Eternal Trimvirate they hunt them with a violence that is mocked in the courts of our land. In the deep south, beyond those savage deserts, their enclaves are left alone and our Princes and Dukes call it craven weakness and the naivety of the barbarian. The Isla Kingdoms hold them at bay with the blood sacrifice of legions and mausoleums to hope upon the Undren shore and our leaders sneer and say ‘they are only this much’, or use this as evidence that they are weak and that we can eke some new strip of godforsaken and useless rock in the ocean away from them for the price of a million lives and a decade of spilt blood.
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> If they really knew what the Undren were, their origin and their mantle and their dreams, understood what we have stolen from them, they would not be anywhere near as blasé and dismissive of the existential threat they pose.
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> They will happily die by the thousands, screaming vengance and judgement to bring a single scion of the surface down, because to the Undren Folk, we are the Great Enemy, Despoiler, Devourer, Deceiver, the Thief of All...
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~Astoria Galadris Belmont, Principle Arch Magister of the Green Tower.

### Chapter 92

> The greed of those who seek knowledge beyond their ken tends to know few boundaries. This is especially true when considering the millennia-long efforts to unpick the treasures left in the long and complex shadows of those who managed to crawl out of the ruin of the Heroic Age and yet endured despite all that those great powers could shovel on them.
> For, just as so many have fallen into darkness forgetting that ‘what you bind may also bind you’, it is even truer to say that it is rarely the ‘things we do not know’ that ruin us, but rather the ‘things we know for certain’.
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~Astoria Galadris Belmont, Principal Arch Magister of the Green Tower.

## Astrid Elderkaid, Milford Fellow of Imperial History

### Chapter 96

> It is very tempting by those who only know of the Ur peoples through tales to consider them thoroughly savage, abandoned to all civilisation and living as monsters in the wilderness. This view is appealing for several reasons – it fits a grand narrative whereby we oppose the savage and, in the rare cases where we are on the same side, uplift them. It is also appealing because it distances us from their awkward past and its relationship to ours. Lastly, nuance is the enemy of great agendas, and few agendas have been greater in the last 10,000 years than the reconquista of the western third of our home continent.
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> Those powers, going west, found only complex problems which refuted simple answers – that the Nine Consuls of the westernmost territory of the Eternal City had decided to forswear their mortality entirely rather than fall to Neron’s Nightmare was a deeply unpleasant surprise. That single act effectively locked out from easy conquest all of the rich lands between Valinkar and Solaneum, south of the Veil Flow, the vast river that runs from the Veil Source high in the Dark Veils.
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> The result, was that they had to turn their eyes north of the river and that put them in immediate opposition to the Ur folk who had somehow sprung fully formed. Faced with the choice of trying to convince those coming behind them to fight implacable undead, imbued by an oath sworn on the strength of that most Dreadful and August Queen, or dispossessing Orcs of their homeland… the decision, it must be said, was easily and expediently made.
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> Nothing of their great cities, their achievements, their civilisation that might have walked out of our own distant past returned westwards, except as tales of stolen glory, worship of false idols or dark deprivations – cannibalism, the eating of the dead, blood sacrifice, rape, pillage and massacre.
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> Today, we know the truth of this – those first invaders, who would become the Grand Dukes of Meltras, Belthorne, Reborin, Renlath, Jeris and Solaneum, had already seen the mirage by which they might rise – *Yogo Shada*.
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> That the price for it was the reputation of the Ur folk, their heritage, history and even their very place in this world was not one that any of those lords or their allies so much as blinked over.
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Excerpt from – The Rise of the Eastern Grand Dukes.

  ~By Astrid Elderkaid, Milford Fellow of Imperial History.

## Baradanus the Pious

### Chapter 59

> [6] Few stand taller as great villains, tyrants and despoilers of hope than those old matriarchs of the first generation. [7] Those who walked the first paths, yet kept their wisdom for themselves, severing their inheritances, that their future generations could never exceed them. [8]Though the heavens have turned and their tyranny is by a distant nightmare, cast down by those who they so wilfully deceived, the curse of their greed lingers on. [9] What glory might we have wrought had those weak willed women done their duty and not abandoned us? [10] What kingdom might endure had they not stolen away the fruits of our hard won labours with their deceiving smiles and wilful words? [11] What eternity might have been ours, but for their fear of the very children they brought into the world? [12] All our ancestors asked for was the same chance that those first people took, and in return they were cruelly denied.
>
>

*~Excerpt from ‘The Book of Denunciations’*

*By Baradanus the Pious*

### Chapter 76

> Our cities lost to plague and Isla devilry, those brave and righteous souls who valiantly resisted could only retreat inland, seeking the strongholds of our ancestors, but even in this, they found all hopes thwarted. For alas, even as we fought desperately, both near and far, against the abomination tide that the vile demons of the Isles had delivered upon us. Even as we wrestled with the understanding of what dark hand had cast the great King Neron low, word came from the east, that the unmade savages, the spawn of the darkest of the sorcerers of the Heroic Age had also followed us to this land, somehow escaping the righteous judgement that had buried their sinful creators.
>
>
> Now, in our moment of darkest tribulation, they emerged once more from the deceiving womb of the earth and took for their own dark ends those heartlands of the golden savanah and the green jungle from whence our heroic forebears had led us, the chosen peoples, so long ago.
>
>
>
> And so, faced with plague, war and ruin, the humble people, descendants of those chosen few, could only lift up their hands to the sky and cry out, and ask *what* had led to our Lord abandoning them, his most loyal servants in this dark time.
>
>

From the ‘Chronicle of the Saint of the Supreme Word’

  By Arch Deacon Baradanus of Jerikhal

## Bo Seong-Yoon

### Chapter 77

> When it comes to matters of generational insanity, few things in recent millennia can stand next to the decision by the Huang, Kong, Long, Weng, Tang, Shu and Fang clans to announce a grand exception to the generational rule. Wracked by the aftermath of the Huang-Mo wars, they sought as a means to avoid further such conflicts to settle among themselves that kind of question by competing in the nature of one’s resources, rather than purely by the force of one’s arms. Each clan would raise a junior of especial talent and endeavour, within the timeframe of 100 years, to nurture them to Dao Ascension. The winner would thus be considered the ‘Young Sovereign’ for that generation, spanning 9000 years, and the apex to which all others could aspire.
>
>
> This was initially met with great success, and the Kong Clan’s big miss, Kong Rui, already a renowned talent who had become a peerless Immortal with a Heavenly Physique by the age of twenty, was crowned young sovereign as the youngest among those competing to reach that threshold within that hundred years.
>
>
> The next such contest, when Venerate Rui ascended, vacating her ‘rank’, became somewhat more standardized – being declared at a specific time, auspicious and upstanding to all those taking part, the winner was Shu Yingji, who carried that rank until that generation had finished its course and a new one was declared.
>
>
>
> Thereafter though, two such sovereigns died in rapid succession – one to misfortune, the other by an assassin’s blade and thereafter the generations were wracked with a problem, because among those who had lost out, with a third sovereign declared in the span of two millennia, a great amount of resources were expended. This was somewhat alleviated by the implementation of the Heavenly 100 Ranking. However, to those competing behind the scenes, the appeal of inward competition had started to lose its lustre. As a result, their juniors started to turn their eyes to competing with other influences, intent on carving out the status of the current generation more thoroughly, and thus set in motion a chain of events that spiraled beyond all expected control.
>
>

From A commentary on the Aftermath of the Huang-Mo Wars

  By Bo Seong Yoon – Celestial Scholar of Many Skies.

## Ancestor Bronze of the Shu Pavilion

### Chapter 62

> …Setting aside the obvious questions of their ‘path’ and ‘conduct’, there are two ways to raise a disciple, I have always felt.
>
>
> The first is to spoil them rotten and give them every opportunity you never had. To give them the best arts, allow them to see great persons teaching the Dao and send them out to do their thing, with your name hanging behind them of course, in those great trials and grand scenes that define every generation.
>
>
> The other is to kick them out the door into the worst pit you can find, hide your name, give them the barest fundamentals and grind their nose in the dirt until their souls shine like diamond.
>
>
> In both cases, your disciple is likely to hate you, but only in one of those scenarios are they also not going to quietly hate themselves by the time they are done with you.
>
>
>
> Incidentally, if in the course of this you happen to find the much sought after *third* *way*, please go tell the rest of the Shu Clan, because they seem to have lost it up their collective ass somewhere in the last aeonspan and are clearly in need of having it removed.
>
>

Correspondence regarding how best to raise a good disciple.

  ~Ancestor Bronze of the Shu pavilion, writing to Elder Shu Kao of the Kao Branch of the Shu Clan.

## *Sir Ebenezer Carnellon, Cartographer Royal to the Imperial Commonwealth.*

### Old Chapter 23

> …The Perilous Realm, or Perilous Vale as it is also occasionally so named, is a place shrouded in antiquated myth and legend. The oldest folk tales from that region speak of it being the original transition between the realms of Mundus and the realm of Elf-hame. Certainly several telling relics of that ancient era when the tribes of men and the Ri of the Fae peoples lived in a more harmonious relationship can be found in its extremities, not least a golden thorn and one of their standing places. Other myths speak of an ancient founder of the Grey family achieving ascendance on one of its peaks, of a dragon’s lair deep beneath the land, or proclaim its circle of 12 ancient stones to be an ancient monument to the aspects who founded this world.
>
>
> However, modern scholarly endeavour had largely preferred the more recent colloquial origin of the name. When this valley and the two to the south of it were the boundary between the Dark Vales, beyond which to the south lie the ducal territory of Belthorne, and the Kingdom of Evershire to the northeast across the mountains. The realm itself being ‘Perilous’ because of the frequent conflict between Belthorne Duchy on the one side and periodically the Abernathy Duchy, Grey Duchy and the Kingdom of Everkind over the mineral wealth in the western reaches.
>
>
>
> These conflicts have been mostly concluded some years past, it must be said. With the discovery of Arborundum below the western mountains, the Duchies exerted considerable pressure and wealth and now the land is owned in perpetuity by the Belthorne and Meltras dukes due to their extensive networks at court and the receding influence of the Grey family in northern politics. The name now persists as much as a means to mock those grand dukes in certain quarters, despite many attempts to have the region formally recognised as the Crown of Meltras, after its 9 great peaks and its mineral wealth in precious metals and Arborundum…
>
>

*Excerpt from –The Northern Continent: A Geography.*

*~by Sir Ebenezer Carnellon, Cartographer Royal to the Imperial Commonwealth.*

## Caius von Lonhafven

### Chapter 27

> ... The Dreaming Gates are strange places. Not of any world, yet all worlds of a certain import contain them. Sadly, what role they were originally brought into being to fulfil seems now lost, largely to folklore and time. What is certain is that all those we know of predate the written records of human civilisation in the lands in which they are found. Some are thought to be gateways between the lands of the living and the dead. Others, way stones that link either important times, or perhaps important places.
>
>
> They take many forms, some natural and some patently constructed. A tree that has always been there. A pile of stones that always manages to have some local import to the people near it. A circle of ancient stones. A cave where the wind seems to sing and people stayed when the world was dark. A pass through which the sun rises or sets in an auspicious manner. A lake of blue waters, high in the mountains, filled with bones. All are peculiar in their own way.
>
>
> A few hardy scholars who have ventured deep into them, or who have had strange encounters around them speak of misty lands, of dancing peoples and ancient song. Some even claim to have seen the edges of Eternity within. The Uncreated Place.
>
>
> Certainly, the places within them are not for the weak willed or those without experience of the transmundane. The most famous of the claimed lands beyond is Elf-hame. The ancient thrones of the elder peoples of old. Others have said the paths to Elysium, from the songs of old, can be found within, or even the shores of Abzu, the waters beneath. That dread place men now call the Star Ocean.
>
>
>
> More ominous still, some claim to have seen the shadows of the first people. Those fearful, mythical pioneers who led us down from the trees, who named the first things, spoke the first words, made the first songs and dances. Our ancestors who looked up at heaven, and down at earth, and said simply, ‘Now... we are the masters of this place.’
>
>

*Excerpt from ‘The Mirrors of Being’*

*~by Caius von Lonhafven*

### Chapter 39

> Contrary to what you may like to believe, and what many among the successor generations would like you to think, the most terrible force to cross in these new enlightened heavens is not the resurgent powers of the Ancient Regime, nor is it the lofty ivory towers of the Orthodox Conclave. It is not the old powers of the Southern Continent, nor the Elves in their island fortresses. Not even the Holy Empire, the power rising to the zenith in this era of enlightenment with its boot pressed firmly on the neck of earthly judgement, or the Imperial Commonwealth with their principles of rational thought and scholarly endeavour backed up by myriad legions and ancient lore, truly stand at the apex of vengeance, despite what recent history might have you think. Rather, that crown has never changed hands, simply shifted form. In this new era, when the Pagan yoke had finally foundered and the heretics of yore are finally dispersed, it is all too easy to believe that Death is now in the hands of more enlightened beings.
> It is not. Before those blessed lands were a sanctuary, they were a prison. Before they were a prison, they were a grave. The followers of the Merciful Lord tell you that only through death and service to their lord can you be saved. The Imperial Commonwealth says that the measure of your actions in this life give you longevity beyond your mortal span. They sell those promises without care, and the common man accepts it. Accepts it because this lie is comforting. In truth, while the old orders fell at the close of the Heroic Age, and those at the apex tell you that the world is now free of its chains... The Eternal City still endures, ruled by its elected Triumvirs, its great temples to the powers of old having escaped the greedy eyes of newer promises. So it is at your peril that you should neglect her eyes and the values she holds. For Spring and Autumn walks in all eras, and no matter how enlightened the priests and prophets, scholars and sages claim we are, no one, no Mortal Hero, no Vengeful Tyrant nor Heavenly Emperor, no Golden God or Bloody Devil has yet wrested those golden fields and mythical torrents from her mourning hands.
>
>

*Excerpt from ‘The Lingering Darkness’*

*~by Caius von Lonhafven*

## Charles De-Witt, Historian of Dark World History

### Chapter 35

> …The Doctrine of Incursion is, if not the most problematic of the supreme stratagems of expansion adopted by the powers of our world, certainly the most insidious. The weaponised use of mortal incarnation and reincarnation from treasure worlds with ideas that are subversive to their chosen destinations has always been a contentious source of disagreement among those who stand at the apex of our earthly powers. As a neutral onlooker I can thus say wholeheartedly that the decision to engage in such a campaign against the various powers, including some contested border regions of the Martial Axial gulf as reprisal for them not siding with the Holy Empire and its allies in their war in the south against Old Amaltharia and Kesh is only likely to have one outcome. To remind those powers, so long departed this ancient ball of rock and largely stood aside from these last centuries of turmoil, that they were also once among the masters who first walked beneath the trees of this place.
> The very last thing we need, still recoiling as our powers are from the after effects of that dreadful series of calamities that broke the spine of the Dark World, is a war over the future of Earth with the Supreme Thrones that control the Heaven’s Path…
>
>

*From an article on current geopolitics, post collapse of the Dark World.*

*~Charles De-Witt, Historian of Dark World History.*

## Charles Edward Carter, Historian

### Old Chapter 18

> …The fate of those races that dwelt beneath the earth at the fall of that era is rarely written of in this newly proclaimed time of enlightenment. Early texts make much of their contribution, and we know that they had cordial relationships with many who would go on to stand at the top of our current age… yet when we interrogate the records that came after that time, when the dust had settled, and the Chronicles were being compiled, those races might as well, with a single stroke, have been crossed from history. Some given to myth, others to darkness and those who were their allies never spoke of them again…
>
>

*Excerpt – ‘Upon the Shores of the Undren Mare’*

*~By Charles Edward Carter, Historian.*

## Clay tablet found near Nineveh

### Chapter 52

> ~Mother of Red Dust, lead us on! ~Your dance propels us, your wisdom drives us! ~With your dream in our hearts we cannot sleep, ~With your song in our ears we cannot find rest, and yet in your embrace we cannot help but linger! ~Please we beseech you, let us slumber!
>
>

*~ Clay tablet inscription found in the vicinity of Nineveh, AD 1891*

### Chapter 90

> Please, we beseech you, Great Mother of Dark Waters! You, whose lamp of gold holds every virtue, whose dark vessel is the well from which unquenchable despair was born.
>
>
> We beseech you, Sovereign Daughter of Golden Flowers! You who danced in shining pastures, who sang before even birds knew song!
>
>
>
> Welcome back my daughter, who lived her life as freely as she could, that she might dance at your side once more.
>
>

~Clay tablet inscription found in a tomb near Nineveh, AD 1910

## Sir Danial of Karoth, Explorer

### Chapter 44

> Anyone who has ever claimed that a Slime Colony Core Is an ‘easy’ thing to deal with, has only ever dealt with those carefully nurtured ones kept as training pets for neophyte adventurers.it is true, that in controlled circumstances they are highly adaptable and utilitarian creatures, exploited for everything from garbage disposal, to agrictulture to execution.
> The wild variants however, if left to their own devices, in lands where they are afforded latitude to grow and adapt will become representative of whatever they eat. If they eat garbage they become living harbringers of pollution. If they eat rot and decay they can become wretched plague pits gnawing at the vitality of the land. However, amongst the very worst are those which have taken up root in battlefields or ancient monster dens, gaining posession of the blood and bones of either men, elf or monster, without cull or containment to limit their spread thereafter. Slimes are what they eat afterall, and a slime colony in posession of the bones of higher circle practicioners is a force of carnage and misfortune like few things you can envisage and with even fewer limitations.
>
>

*Excerpt from ‘A Bestiary for the Undren Mare’*

*~Sir Danial of Karoth, Explorer.*

## Elaria Everkind

### Old Chapter 17

> …Things relating to Karma and Fate should not be forced. Some of you sitting here have experienced that first hand and paid the price required. More than, in some ways, but it’s something that’s always eluded those old robbers and ghosts who scammed their way heavenward and who like to think themselves particularly smart for their achievements. They too easily forget the wisdom of their betters who survived far longer on the dark paths through the abyss of magic, and upon whose footsteps they frequently trample. Subsequently, it is all too often that they try to take and command rather than accept what comes and use it appropriately.
> There is an old saying, really it’s as old as the first person trying and failing to catch a fish and spearing their own foot in the process, but it has a kind of applicability that speaks to many levels across this lecture, regarding Karma, Fate, Manifest Destiny, Good Fortune and whatever else you want to lump in there: ‘Accept what is given, receive what is due. But be careful what you bind, lest it instead bind you’. It is also a maxim far too many generations fall into darkness and are thoroughly abandoned through forgetting.
>
>

Excerpt from ‘How to Anger People and Influence Gods’: Lecture series to the Academy of Unified Magic’s for Amaltharia.

*~By Arch Magister of Amaltharia – Elaria Vesperina Everkind Marcella Grey & delivered by Magister Alwen Elvere*

### Chapter 26

> "…It is a common theme amongst those who are mortal to look at the sky and wonder what the final frontier of their existence is. Is it space? The eternal void between the stars? Or is it the void between their own ears that they fill with impossibilities about the void beyond the stars. Unfortunately I am here to tell you that you must look further still, for even upon arriving at that distant shore, you will be met with exactly the same question that led you there. ‘What else is there, and why has it brought me here, to this desolate place?’
>
>
> The answer which so many seek. The reason why you have all enrolled on this course is really, stupidly simple.
>
>
> Karma.
>
>
> Karma is the lure and the web by which you are here. It is the glue which anchors you, which drives you to new heights and tears you down when you fly too close to the sun. If the Mana Tides of the Seven Fundamentals are the currency upon which the mortal realms are formed and the power of the very dimensions themselves the bridge between the Immortal and the Eternal, then Karma is the web and the weave that binds the Simple Masters of the lower dimensions to Esoteric Savants of the higher ones. Comprehension of its existential geometry is what separates the Great God from the True God, the True God from the Outer God and the Outer God from those who walked the first paths.
>
>
> Karma is the wage by which the war on that highest stage is fought. Paid in and out, to bring in the new and see out the old. To excise the improper and exclude the darkness that seeps.
>
>
> Some would tell you it is about good or bad, righteousness versus evil, but I can tell you this is their ignorance. Their lack of perspective. In its balance is nothing so facile as good and evil, right and wrong, light or dark, truth or untruth. All these things are malleable and subvertable if one has enough perspective. To this end, just consider what can and cannot be touched by {Unlimited Wish}. Even this mighty hammer of the supreme divines cannot do more than pluck weakly at the strings of Karma, giving tunes already written in its weave.
>
>
> Karma is above all these things, behind them, beyond them and before them.
>
>
> Karma is the cage which holds the whole acausal construct together.
>
>
> Gods fear it, Ghosts flee from it, Tyrants are unmade by it, Despoilers are ruined by it and those who Defile are purified through it.
>
>
> Forget this at your peril.
>
>
>
> For if you do, it will bind you so firmly that you will never see its web even as it drags you down and strips you of everything you could ever be..."
>
>

*Excerpt from ‘How to Anger People and Influence Gods’ Lecture series to the Academy of Unified Magic’s of Amaltharia, adapted from the work 'How to Anger Gods and Influence Mortals'.*

*~delivered by the Arch Magister of Amaltharia, Elaria Grey.*

## Epikradus, Archon of Jeris

### Chapter 103

> What terror the new day brings, we knew it not, having crawled out of that dark place, thinking that the war between the faith of our forebears and the faith of our rulers was the worst that this land could deliver us to.
>
>
> We endured the war between the Isla and the Eternal City. We survived the devastating return of those demons of the old world, the slave race of orcs, made by heretic sorcerers pretending to be gods in a bygone age. We overcame, through great tribulation, the curses of our own dark past, our hero Laurentius sealing away the defiled prophetess Cornelia, who even death had turned his face away from, such were the depths of her depravity. We repelled the assault of the Hibric Queens, our heroes even casting down two of their whore queens, Macha and Fea, forever sealing away the dark strength of their dread Phantom Queen.
>
>
> Why then, are we blighted so? To have been delivered from that era, to see a new dawn rise… and to find that those who brought it, blazing suns on their banners, are the synthesis of every dark thing we have yet encountered?
>
>
> Six duchies, six curses, six ruins we hope come to them whom we welcomed in, gave succour to, gave blood and stone to, and who, now that they have grown with our endeavour, have done as some base orc or debauched elf and wage only war, sending us to die on foreign shores while our daughters are made the playthings of their nobles and our livelihoods provide only gold to bring death.
>
>
> Had I not ventured to Solaneum myself, seen the seal, seen where poor, proud, noble Laurentius fell to deny her, Cornelia and the Darkness of Neron who she was besotted by, I would believe her living still, just as that witch Asuraerleth, corrupted Saintess that she is, still does, and that she was the root of all our evils still.
>
>
>
> Oh, Lord, your servants call out to you. Pray do not deny us. Answer us. Show us light in this darkness.
>
>

~Prayer to The Herald of Solace, first penned by Epikadrus, Archon of Jeris

## Eremion of Odontes

### Chapter 97

> And so did fair-haired Tyche roam far and wide.
>
>
> Cast loose from her mother’s watchful eye, hither and thither she went.
>
>
> From sunlit shore, to starless sea, from icy dark to burning lands,
>
>
> Until at last she found her path did bring her to an eastern plain.
>
>
> There, where snow capped mountains pierced the sky,
>
>
> Where amid golden fields and flowering valleys many destinies were born,
>
>
> Where life-giving waters flowed from mountain to the sea,
>
>
> Where savage heat, an echo of star-setting Helios, did linger still.
>
>
>
>
> [There], did long-sorrowing Tyche, find her home once more,
>
>
> Upon the banks of those great rivers, shining jewels of the land.
>
>
> Her words heard only by the whispering reed beds,
>
>
> Her gentle songs echoing only for the new-born mists,
>
>
> Her bright steps reflected solely in its shining waters.
>
>
> Long upon those life-giving waters did she linger,
>
>
> Who soon, the gods decreed, would see myriad gifts spring forth,
>
>
>
> The cornucopia by which the path of that world was truly set.
>
>

- Translation of fragmentary excerpt from ‘Tyche’

  By Eremion of Odontes.

## Scholar Fei Quan

### Chapter 85

> The end of the first campaign of the Huang Mo war came with the climactic clash between Mo Zhao, the Celestial Demoness, Dao Mother Binary Ruin, granddaughter of God Slaughtering Lunatic, and the heroine of Huang, Saintess of Emei, Huang Guo Wuli. These two Heavenly Venerates clashed on the very spot where the whole conflict began, and while neither fell, no side could clearly claim victory. The obvious loser, was, in the end, Red Splendour great world, where Mo Zhao, in a final act of pettiness, damaged the stability of its sun, forcing Huang Wuli to seal it away with her own two hands or let it collapse into a stellar nightmare that would have distorted the star map of a dozen surrounding powers.
>
>
> Thereafter, things appeared calmer for a while. However, the forceful manner of the Mo clan’s actions did not sit well with many righteous factions and so, determined to make some final restitution on their pride, the errant daughter of Mo Zhao, Mo Xiao, was tracked down to a minor little great world on the edge of the Kong, Huang and Meng clan’s territories.
>
>
> Two attempts by influential friends of members of the younger generation of the Huang clan were made to embroil Mo Xiao in troubles met with failure after failure as they vanished without trace. Finally, after an eighth such mysterious disappearance, a Celestial Venerate revealed that Mo Xiao, who many had held as a member of the younger generation, was in fact a Worldly Venerate who had been using her realm to assassinate juniors of righteous factions. With this revealed, the Huang and their allies were enraged and, supported by many other righteous factions, started to search for Mo Xiao to demand restitution.
>
>
>
> So began the Second Campaign of the Huang-Mo Wars.
>
>

-Excerpt from ‘100 Heavens of Death – The Second Campaign of the Huang-Mo Wars.’

By Scholar Fei Quan.

## Fei Shanxiang, Scholar of Four Crowns

### Chapter 87

> The righteous factions, thoroughly enraged and led on, we can see in hindsight, by the various behaviours of the Mo clan, and having cornered one of their most famous villains, keeping the rest of her clan at bay, chose not to simply kill her, but rather to capitalize on their good fortune. They demanded that the Mo clan had to pay reparations to every world slighted in the war and Mo Xiao should become the concubine of Lord Huang Gan Murong, a recently ascended scion and rising star of the Wise Emperor of Huang’s court who many felt should be honoured for his contributions that had been cruelly overshadowed by Shu Tenjin.
>
>
> However, the fervour of those wronged in the war was all-consuming. Thus, they also seized all her treasures, and distributed them to those they felt most deserving of recompense while the great powers looked on. Her precious blades they presented to Huang Gan Murong as Mo Xiao’s gift upon becoming his concubine.
>
>
> Perhaps matters could *still* have been resolved, but the fervour of those looking on was not abated and so, seeking further insult, the many victims sought to embarrass Mo Xiao and the Mo clan to the utmost and thus dragged forward 100 maidens of the Mo clan they had captured and stripped them, displaying them above Kang’s origination, finally stripping Mo Xiao herself and binding her in the sky as well, while all looked on and laughed.
>
>
> Unfortunately, this stratagem was turned on its head, revealing the depth of their pit, for in that instant, ethereal words, whispering from beyond the vault of heaven, assailed a whole starfield: *“How easily you forget, it seems, o ‘righteous seats of wisdom’, that you show such disrespect to our God Slaughtering Hall? This strength with which you guarantee all here to be untouched by events, having shamed our Daughter – I wish to witness it for myself.”*
>
>
> In that instant, a shadow descended from the void and cloaked Mo Xiao, carrying her away. Those elders who had stripped her and taken her things were all slain in its passing and every other, junior and elder alike, who had been present and seen Mo Xiao’s heavenly body, was struck blind, tears of blood streaming from their eyes.
>
>
>
> Thus, did the third campaign of the Huang-Mo wars begin.
>
>

-Excerpt from ‘Tears of Blood – The Third Campaign of the Huang-Mo wars’

By Fei Shanxiang – Scholar of Four Crowns.

## Folk Tales

### Chapter 52

> “If you wish a man death you need only think only of ‘Red Dust’ and slumber each night in the arms of a gilded beauty, surrounded by money and riches, content in the knowledge that eventually you shall never wake.”
>
>

*~ Ancient folk saying from the southern continent.*

### Chapter 99

> Unbidden, I see the bright land where parasols bloom, the extremity of the Chronogram.
>
>
> There, riding upon the mist, I wander to that lofty peak, wreathed in the whirling wind and cloud.
>
>
> The Lady Supreme, Primordial Sovereign, lives there.
>
>
> Queen Mother, who resides in a palace of blue-green jade.
>
>
> Around her a celestial crowd, favoured children of heaven, sing and dance.
>
>
> Theirs are songs of sun, sea, forest and cloud…
>
>
>
> How I dream that one day my own child will be welcomed to that place…
>
>

Excerpt from ‘Ascent to the Peacock Palace’

  ~Folk tale, author unknown.

## Tribune Gaius Telk

### Chapter 60

> Fighting Undren underground is a nightmare, and as you are aware, our current tactical doctrine advises that you never do it if you can help it. However, in your case, I understand the wider strategic implications of the guidance you are requesting so hopefully this missive will be helpful in that regard.
>
>
> As I said, they are a nightmare to deal with. Even if your opponents are limited to the Fourth Circle, the abilities they can draw from weapons blessed with the signs of their ancestral totems are, without exception, dangerous even to those of higher circles. When you add in their fanatical devotion to those icons and the nigh unbreakable morale their veneration instils, be it in defence or offence against their forces, you should expect them to give no quarter and fight to the death without a second thought.
>
>
>
> As such, our current doctrine regarding their outposts is as follows: attack with overwhelming force, squads of Evocati, led by Spectrum Commandos and Decapitare. They scout with rats, and do things with fungus that make even Ghoblan look on with respect, so burn everything, use mass slaying spells and never close to melee range except as a last resort.
>
>

Strategic missive.

~from Tribune Gaius Telk to Commander Teller of the Dark Veils expeditionary unit.

## Han Ouyeng

### Chapter 15

> …The question of heaven’s eyes within the Yin Eclipse Mountains is one that has gone around and around in circles for as long as people have tried unpicking its secrets, so there is no reason to bore you with the long list of failures in this report. However, undoubtedly our own Fates seem somewhat blind to the happenings within it, and that is not for lack of trying both amidst our own influence and others to ensure otherwise.
> But what I will tell you in this report, is my own experience… If any force of the heavens genuinely has eyes in that place, it clearly works through those damn squirrels; nothing else can really account for the strange geometry of chance they effect on the success and failure of any endeavour which crosses their path in those deep places. Without their crossing we would certainly have died to that lizard abomination, more ghost than being.
>
>

Excerpt from a report on traversing the Inner Valleys

  ~Authored by Han Ouyeng

## Mantled Empress Heaven Breaker

### Chapter 33

> He who redeems a single fate is called a fool by morons.
>
>
> She who transforms a single village is called a hero by the envious.
>
>
> The one who changes a country is a crowned a king by fools.
>
>
> Anyone who would think to pervert a generation really should know better.
>
>
>
> As to those who would mess with the fate of a whole world for their own ends? They deserve everything that is waiting in line get to them.
>
>

*~ Apocryphally attributed to Mantled Empress Heaven Breaker*

## Horatio Drusus

### Chapter 54

> *And then there is the ‘Undrenmare’. In human society it is called this, because it is a giant series of underground seas and cavern systems that the Eternal City first delved, hence ‘Mare’ instead of the more colloquial ‘Sea’. Most assume that ‘Undren’ was by origin just a bad pun or humorous misspelling of ‘Under’ that stuck. It is not. The name itself actually originates from the fortress archipelago of Isla Dan’Autha, long before the Eternal City got involved, and means Undren Sea, or Sea of the Undren. Not because there is a sea down there, though there are several, but because of the beast tides of Undren Kin that swarm from the depths. When they periodically break upon the western depths beneath Isla Duan, Isla Van and Isla Krae or the eastern depths, across the great ocean below the Eternal City, they are every bit as as vast as that great sea themselves, and ten times as perilous.*
>
>

Excerpt from ‘The Darkness Beneath.’

  ~By Horatio Drusus, ‘The Undren Breaker’, Master of Adventurers for the Eternal City.

## Hua Xiaomei

### Chapter 22

> For a long life and happiness in any Great World, there are three maxims that you should always adhere to. First, never annoy the Hunter Bureau. Second, never anger the Military Bureau. Third, if anyone ever tells you in seriousness that the Meng, Mo or Huang Clans are a pushover? Rejoice in your heart and do everything you can to become that person’s friend, for you will be able to make a fortune off of their gullibility.
>
>

Excerpt from ‘A Mortal’s Journey to the Sky’

  ~By Hua Xiaomei

## Huang Wen Bei, Venerable Red Splendour

### Chapter 84

> The chaos that rippled out from the demise of our Red Splendour Great World, so cruelly and viciously cursed by the Mo clan for the slight those villains perceived justice upon their murderous juniors to be, has become a plague that none seem able to stop.
>
>
> Such a vile assault on my people cannot be borne. The rapacious hordes and underhanded schemes of the Mo have struck a fell blow against our ancestral seats in August Splendour starfield and now the Ming and the Teng are also moving to exploit matters. As such, I authorised our local influences to provide redress to this matter: the world of every sect associated with the seeping ruin of Red Splendour to be brought low in kind. For each of their spawn upon my ancient homeworld, ten thousand had to die so that it was clear to all: my Red Splendour Sect do not brook such actions, nor does the Huang clan.
>
>
> There are those who called this action mad, or disproportionate, but that is because they did not *understand* what it means to have the Mo savage at your gates and plundering your people, your lands as we do. The Mo clan speaks only to violence and the forceful will of heavens stronger than their own. We had *lost* Red Splendour, a jewel in our starfield’s celestial crown. To respond in any other way would be to invite this sorry fate upon some other weaker worlds for the Mo savage never stops at just one conquest. They did not before, when they plagued Gan Solace for 30,000 years, forcing that noble people from their ancestral lands entirely.
>
>
>
> As such, it was a great moment when those heroic remnants of the ancient Gan, now sheltered by our own Huang clan, were among the vanguard who arrived to initiate the reclamation of Red Splendour.
>
>

Excerpt from ‘A Commentary on Villainy – The Mo Savage’.

  By Huang Wen Bei – Venerable Red Splendour

## Imperial Astrology Bureau

### Chapter 25

> When the Eye is drawn to the East, and Dragon clashes with Phoenix, amidst the arrogance and fury the auspicious dawn will herald a new path through the lost gate, and with it the transformation of what could be, into what is will deliver a new era.
>
>

*Auspice of Providence, delivered to his August Imperial Majesty at the turning of the year, at the most auspicious hour.*

*~Imperial Astrology Bureau*

## Eunuch Ji

### Chapter 24

> While there is much that can be written about the storied endeavours and myriad accolades of the Courtly Flowers of the Azure Palace; of the heroics of Lady Jian, of the lavish soirees of Lady Bai, of the remarkable rebellion of Lady Kai, or even the utter failure of the Court to stop Lady Mo from simply *being*, it is perhaps unsurprisingly the enigma of Lady Xiao that still manages to exercise more febrile minds than this old scholar.
>
>
> The issue that pertains to the Lady Xiao in truth stems from the fact that she is, on official documentation, not a ‘Lady of the Court’ but instead an ‘Imperial Advisor’; the only one of that fair gender in fact. Even Imperial Ancestor Fu, despite her vaunted position in this world, has not been granted this honour. Subsequently, over the time since her elevation to that position there has emerged a vast body of conjecture and suspicion as for the reasons behind her appointment. I will not bore you with that here, except to say that almost all of what is written is not worth the paper wasted on it.
>
>
> There was never any chance of her being considered the 38th Concubine of the Emperor, a position that eventually went to the Saintess of Flowers, Tao Feishan Miao. Nor was there ever any possibility of her becoming a ‘Companion’ to either Empress, nor a ‘Favoured Lady’ of our esteemed Emperor, primarily on account of her superior cultivation. I understand that this is hard to take for those members of the junior generations who profess to live and die by their determination to untangle such webs and turn them to their own agendas, but reality, I am afraid, is cruel.
>
>
> No, the real reason for her elevation to that status is that she is too problematic to *not* be tied to the Imperial Court. Her talent for cultivation is beyond outstanding. Her beauty is praised across a dozen worlds. Her closest blood relative is a World Venerate and the Lu Clan appears to have no apparent political hold over her.
>
>
>
> In short, she is a shining example within this text of one of the great maxims of good governance – ‘Keep the most dangerous and unpredictable elements that might disrupt your rule, but which you cannot easily rid yourself of, where you can see them, at all times’.
>
>

Excerpt from ‘The Flowers of the Azure Palace’.

  ~By Eunuch Ji

## Chronicler Jiang

### Chapter 3

> …It was before the Blue Water City was founded, before the Blue Morality Emperor took his throne, that Lu Fu Tao, Blue Water Sage as he would later be styled, came to the mysterious and forgotten land of Yin Eclipse and meditated in the valleys. Apparently he lived in the Blue Water Mountains for several centuries, investigating the great mysteries of the Dao, training disciples and occasionally slaughtering demonic beasts and performing various deeds of good merit for the wild people of those lands who had long been abandoned to Imperial Governance and the Azure Authority alike.
>
>
> Then one day, as some of his disciples were exploring a valley within that dark and forbidden zone around the Great Mount, they found a spatial rift, purported to be not far to the west of the great peak of the thundering clouds. A place where that valley joined another inexplicably. Upon being informed of this, and being a valorous and upright person and generally righteous in his demeanour, the Blue Water Sage by all accounts became concerned for the local people who, unenlightened, eked out a crude living around the edge of the forbidden zone using herbs and other such things to sell at the coast to those who crossed the ocean.
>
>
>
> He, Lu Fu Tao, and some of his disciples met with several of the elders of those people and they in turn informed the future sage that their own ancestors had occasionally gotten caught in the rifts and that while some had vanished without trace, several had returned each having attained strange enlightenments. This discourse lead, apparently, to an exchange of views and teaching between the future sage and the locals who lived there. They showed him some of the things that had emerged over the years, mostly innocuous or strange, and he gave them new insights into the will of the heavens and the movement of the celestial bodies, sharing with them the teachings of the Heavenly Dao in all its wonder.
>
>

Writing on the matter of the Blue Water Sage Volume 2

  ~ Author Unknown – attributed to a Chronicler Jiang.

### Chapter 4

…History is mute as to what finally convinced the future sage that the rift would be worth investigating. However, according to what is said, having made suitable preparations with his disciples and close companions to secure his lineage should he not return, he meditated for thirty-three days and, on the thirty-fourth, selected an auspicious time and entered that place with several other reclusive experts.

Apparently, he underwent nine trials and encountered nine mysteries that eventually led him through dark paths to a great crystal house amid a field of flowers. What he encountered there, no book teaches in detail, but according to those who observed that group’s return, he departed with some haste, only pausing to advise the local chieftains to treat any rifts they encountered with the greatest respect and caution and not to treat any gains obtained from them cheaply or frivolously.

Soon after returning to the coast he founded Blue Water City at the mouth of the Blue Yin River, before eventually departing our world on the Great Xuan Expedition. Before he departed, he was met with members of his clan and others who had come to learn of his endeavours, even being styled Blue Water Dao Sage by the Emperor himself, but no one could convince him to speak of what he had encountered.

Nonetheless his journey stirred a furore in that generation, such that all its great scions descended on that place, dreaming of great achievements of their own… Unfortunately, it was not to be, and the pride of a generation fell without trace in those rifts and the sects that sent them all suffered inexplicable calamities shortly after.

Writing on the matter of the Blue Water Sage, Volume 2

  ~ Author Unknown – attributed to a Chronicler Jiang.

## Sagacious Ascendant Jiao

### Old Chapter 15

> —The true origins of the crystalline mineral called ‘Venerate’s Tears’ or in some ancient and contested texts the much less grandiose ‘Ignitic Arborundum’ is something of a mystery. Most of the current worth of material in circulation is from sources found already hewn from the land. As a resource, it only appears in the most ancient and relict of ruins and caverns throughout our great world. Usually it is worked in some way, either fashioned into very mundane ornaments and decorations or, on the rare occasion that ‘ingots’ of it are recovered, they are invariably twisted or in the shape of cut lengths as long as a man’s arm. Divinations carried out on scavenged artefacts and pieces of its crystalline ore by great sages have determined that it is the fossilised remnants of some kind of primordial tree, but whether root or branch none have ever been able to claim with confidence to the satisfaction of my own person.
>
>
> Several things stand out about it that make it notable as a material. Firstly it is impossibly durable; the only means to cut it is with a refined tool of a Venerate Cultivator or with an edge of the mineral itself. The consensus that has come to be over the aeons is that it can only be worked by someone of that lofty status. Secondly; all the artefacts known of it to this author are utterly inert to qi. Be they cups, plates, floor tiles or filigree decoration. Third however, is perhaps most mysterious; while all such artefacts are inert, refusing any input of elemental qi or soul strength, they also, and without exception as far as I am aware, project a certain field of suppression to the world around them. A mere cutlery knife, or sharpened edge of decorative lintel carved from it can easily slice apart most barriers or artefacts.
>
>
>
> Subsequently its artefacts are much sought after as a ‘status’ statement rather than a mineral of practical worth for the average cultivator. The Imperial Dynasty of our world, for example, owns one set of plates, cups and cutlery that is the exclusive property of the emperor himself. The Jade Gate Court’s signature ‘gate’ is also an artefact carved primarily from it, and the Shu Pavilion possesses a statue garden of several strange pieces which it uses to entertain important visitors. Few give much interest to the raw material, such is the aforementioned difficulty in working with it. As far as I am aware, only the Seven Sovereigns School, the Hunter Bureau and the Lu Clan possess any notable reserves of the ‘ingots’ and mainly trade it to sources beyond the confines of this world.
>
>

Excerpt from – 'Mineralogy of Eastern Azure Great World: Volume 5.'

  By Sagacious Ascendant Jiao of the Earth Blaze Refinement Sect.

## Johnson Carnellon Du Pont

### Chapter 41

> ...Why establish a school near Evergrove? This question has at turns perplexed and vexed many a scholar of the machinations of our world in the last few centuries. On the face of it, the land is certainly suitable, but the reality of its location is such that all but the most diffident would only consider it a rather inauspicious place. Close to the entrance points to the Undren Mare and the Dark Veils, many have argued that what was really needed there was a fortress, to quell the discontent of its populace and to guard against the dangers from the deep waters of that underworld ocean. Others have suggested that Emperor Lucius was swayed by his paramour to provide some means of returning Evergrove to Imperial prominence after its vitality and economy were nearly ruined by the incursions late in the previous Emperor Wenfel's prestigious, if tumultuous, reign.
>
>
> In light of this, I wish to provide a third possibility. The school was placed where it was as an act of petty vengeance against the Dukes of Meltras, Reborin and Belthorne who were ousted in the early, troubled years of Emperor Lucius's reign as he struggled to control the various interests unhappy with the way Emperor Wenfel Abernathy's family was pushed out of court politics in favour of the Everkind and Grey Duchies. In placing the school where they did, the Empress and her clique within the court clearly intended to bury the memory of the glory days of the Meltras and Belthorne Duchies under Emperors Alosius, Vance and Wenfel – still longed for in the eyes of many in that region – with new grandeur that would elevate the Everkind family back to prominence in the land from which they were ousted for their misdeeds and corruption several thousand years before.
>
>
> Had her ploy been successful, the new Academy might have supplanted the royal Academy of Gallicia or the Milford Institute, and this was undoubtedly her intention. However, in the years that have followed its establishment, it has rapidly cemented its reputation as an insatiable money pit – furthermore, with low standards of entry and a determination to welcome and even pay for common folk to attend, there is little hope of it maintaining any parity with our own other great institutes, never mind those to the South in the Holy Empire. Its leaders also engage in continued and petty strife with the Orthodox Conclave, to the detriment of many who might otherwise wish their endeavour well. As a final nail in its usefulness to our rather battered national image of late, its administrators have also begun to focus on insane or inane diplomatic endeavours to such far flung corners of the world as Renhallen, Chulut, Kesh, the Isles of the Ten Songs and even, heavens forbid, some of the Island Enclaves of the Sea People – those bloodthirsty elves who have ravaged our western coasts for millennia, giving no quarter to man, child nor beast – when instead they should be seeking to mend fences with the influences to the South in Gallicia and Kasten or to the north with the White Empire of Kesevic Rus.
>
>
>
> So I can only reiterate, this great endeavour appears more as a task of sabotage to the learned onlooker than any act of national aggrandisement. Yet another reason why so many are now wondering whether or not our august emperor was wrong to shirk millennia of tradition upon his coronation and agree to co-rulership with the last scion of the Everkind Duchy, Sannae Everkind, as clearly this untried and untested princess is not suited to the rigours of governance of a grand empire such as ours.
>
>

*Excerpt from "Ashes from Glory, a history of the Imperial Commonwealth since the Second Succession Crisis"*

*~By Johnson Carnellon Du Pont, Historian Extraordinaire, 8th Duke of Carnellon*

## Karel du Marn, Scholar of Milford

### Chapter 93

> If we are talking about ruins associated with the Old Eastern Eternal Empire, it has to be said that the most troublesome is not, as you might expect, Old Solaneum. There, the Hibric Queens’ and the elves’ intervention actually delivered a significant boon to later attempts to re-occupy it, even if it was at the glorious expense of the holy church’s wider ambitions. Nor is it Rulani, mostly because it was a trading hub in life and then much raided early in the war, its greatest dangers dispersed, first by those who founded Solaneum then by a procession of heroic explorers thereafter.
> No, the most problematic of all those ruins is Merovin, later termed the Mausoleum of Dreams by those who wanted to romanticise it, or the Hero’s Skullpile, by anyone who actually made it back out of the old city, for Merovin was the slave capital of the eastern cities, and home to its greatest arena where for a millennia the greatest gladiators of the Eastern Eternal Empire plied their trade… it was those poor souls who Merovin threw first into darkness, and who, when they saw the nature of the doom they had been delivered to, obliterated Old Merovin and buried their last masters deep in the dark earth, never to die, and now, it is those poor souls, who linger still, unrelenting in their determination to slay everything that is not bound as they are… and who day and night until they were sealed by ten arch magisters, strove to free themselves from that pit and take their bloody crusade in every direction.
>
>

On the Old cities of the East.

  ~By Karel du Marn, scholar of Milford.

## Kong Feishan, Scholar of Kong

### Chapter 86

> The cumulative battle of the second campaign of the Huang-Mo war came on when the heir of the Shu clan, the favoured scion of the Wise Emperor of Shu Shu Tenjin, after much beseeching from all sides, finally entered the fray and in a series of dazzling strategic manipulations succeeded in cornering Mo Xiao, the demon daughter of Binary Ruin on the Supreme World of Kang's Origination in the territory of Ten Thousand Stars Bureau.
>
>
> Almost immediately the great powers of the Huang, Kong and Fang declared their intention to stand for justice and supported Ten Thousand Stars Bureau, declaring that no retaliation by the Mo clan would reflect on them.
>
>
> Cut off from her clan, Mo Xiao and Shu Tenjin fought a peerless battle in the skies above Kang’s Origination. He, merely a Dao Ascendant, fought brilliantly, aided by three stalwart companions: Huang Fei, Kong Lihua and Fang Zihao. Over the course of 100 days, the Four Righteous Heroes as they became known, systematically exposed all her schemes and stratagems, even exposing her status as a Dao Venerate. In valour, strategy, means and methods the four displayed to the heavens that they were the match of their opponent in every way until as last she was brought down and grasped.
>
>
> Hailing their achievement, many clamoured that she be bound so she could wreck no further havoc – however the Heroes refuted this. Shu Tenjin was particularly vehement, refusing three times and stating that Mo Xiao must recant and acknowledge her crimes. While many praised his manner, all spoke forth, elders and juniors of influences alike, worried that the young Prince and the other heroes and heroine, would in their naiveté let the villainess slip through their grasp, for she had displayed so many stratagems up to this point that few knew where to look.
>
>
> In truth, many were also keen to see a great price paid and for the villainous Mo to lose much face, and with Mo Zhao and others blocked by the might of the righteous powers, others saw an opportunity to strike a fierce blow against the vitality of the Mo clan. Still, Shu Tenjin did not relent and was in the end commanded by the coalition of those righteous powers to stand aside and they determined that she, the villain, had to suffer penalty. The Mo clan had to pay reparations to every world slighted in the war and Mo Xiao had to become the concubine of Huang Gan Murong, a recently ascended scion who had ferocious momentum within the Wise Emperor of Huang’s court.
>
>
>
> Thus, did the second campaign of the Huang Mo wars come to a close.
>
>

-Excerpt from ‘Ten Thousand Eyes of Blood: A treatise on the origins of the third campaign of the Huang-Mo wars’

  By Kong Feishan – Scholar of Kong.

## Kong Wei

### Chapter 83

> The matter of the Huang-Mo war is an interesting one, because it highlights objectively, to us scholars of the Grand Dao of Divination, the risks inherent to meddling overly with forces of Heavenly Fate. The original spark for this conflict, which went on to wrack a broad swathe of the ‘Azure Astral’, ‘Ten Thousand Stars’ and ‘August Splendour’ starfields has largely been buried by the events that followed; however, I, having peered carefully at the heavens, have determined it aligned with Red Splendour Great World, a minor influence under the protection of the Huang Heavenly Clan.
>
>
> There, several juniors arrived intending to participate in an auction of rare treasures ran afoul of friends of that world’s Imperial family. Failing to recognise the devil they tempted, they were presented evidence linking one of that number to the Mo clan. Seeking to do good in the eyes of their own world’s fate, these juniors captured them and calling out ‘Evil’ on behalf of the Huang clan, seized their good fortune and executed them as sinners against the world, unaware of their origins.
>
>
> When the Mo clan discovered what was done, an expedition was sent out to demand answers for this enormous slight against their clan. However, upon arriving at ‘Red Splendour’ Great World, they found the auction well underway and many grandees in attendance who were not well disposed to their clan or its wider influences. As a result the Imperial Family who found strength in the circumstances, rebuffed them and sent them away with paltry reward, mocking them as devils who wanted justice for their slaughtering ways.
>
>
> Enraged, the leader of the expedition departed, but before he did, he noted that the rampant rule of the world had tainted its fate, such that its rulers had used many sideways means, using oaths incautiously and deploying various stratagems to stymie the good fortune of others that they might keep their position secure, hiding all this behind the shield of the Huang Heavens.
>
>
> Upon returning, that leader disseminated widely that this world was, as such, deeply exposed to karmic backlash and that there was good fortune to be made among those who sought to quell villains in the eyes of their own heavens and that the strength of its juniors was restrained by their deep ties to their world’s fate stymieing their hopes of severing their connections to their world’s fate and ascending beyond the Ancient Immortal realm.
>
>
> Soon ‘Red Splendour’ Great World, courtesy of its central position and established links to other worlds, was visited by several influences who themselves had been bottlenecked for want of suitable ties to fate at higher realms. Many slaughtered widely without care for status, hunting those who had incurred demerits to aid their own advancement. Others illicitly supported those who would rebel against those who controlled the world, providing them many opportunities. This, in a single stratagem, forced the rulers of that world into a pit, whereupon their rotten edifice collapsed as their own fortune was overturned and their rampant behaviour consigned everything they had built.
>
>
>
> Thus did the first campaign of the Huang-Mo wars start.
>
>

Excerpt from – ‘Insanity of a Thousand Years – The First Huang-Mo Campaign.’

  Authored by Kong Wei, Celestial Scholar.

## Kung Quan

### Chapter 104

> Every clan and sect has at least one tale of gross stupidity or greed that defines the perception of a generation. However none have quite managed to quite have the defining momentum on the course of a generation within recent memory as the reasons why Cang Di continues to sit like a gargoyle in the only participating slot of our Eastern Azure Great World in the Heavenly Hundred Ranking.
>
>
> The origin of this rather amusing circumstance, in fact, lies with a different scandal entirely. That which played out some eight millennia ago between Song Jia, a mortal girl of some means and personal good fortune and one Shu Bao, son of Shu Shen Bao, grandson of Lord Shu Fei Bao, of the Shu Heavenly clan, himself an eminent official and adjunct to the Heavenly Lord Shu Han, administrator and advisor to the Wise King of Shu.
>
>
> Song Jia was first noticed by Shu Bao during a tournament and after some persuasion agreed to travel with Shu Bao and some of his close friends within the younger generation. After some time, Shu Bao’s own teacher and guardian, a sworn brother of Shu Bao’s father, also became impressed enough with her manner and grounding influence on Shu Bao that, with the backing of some elders in the sect and clan, he offered her a place as a Core Disciple within Eastern Azure’s Shu Pavilion, while the elders of the sect saw, in her core, her talent and her lack of complicated politics, an opportunity to bind an influential scion like Shu Bao to Eastern Azure in some small way and pressed for her to be adopted into the Shu heavenly clan and betrothed to Shu Bao.
>
>
> To many, this opportunity to rise to the heavens in a single bound would be a chance only dreamed of. Song Jia, however, despite being flattered, apparently did not have much attraction to Shu Bao and had also grown to dislike many of those he associated with and trusted in their generation. In the end she tried to tactfully decline the offer, claiming that her status was not enough to match such an illustrious person.
>
>
> The Shu Heavenly clan, however, now appraised of the true depths of her talent and potentially seeing a ‘Good Fortune Core’ such as she had slipping through their grasp, leant heavily on Shu Bao, who in turn became more attentive of her and to some accounts changed his ways such that she eventually relented, won over by his willingness and perhaps because the offer levelled at her was effectively too good to refuse at that point.
>
>
>
> At this point, all looked good. Song Jia was well-liked, Shu Bao was well-connected and all appeared happy with the match. The problem, unfortunately, arose elsewhere, far from Eastern Azure. Lord Shu Fei Bao had long pushed for closer collaboration between the Shu and Kong heavenly clans and his good friend, Kong Bao had a granddaughter of good talent who was also a member of the younger generation on Eastern Azure. Kong Bao’s wife ensured that the girl was introduced to Shu Bao, who became smitten with her, despite being now tied to a marriage contract with Song Jia.
>
>

Excerpt from: ‘The Politics of the Heavenly Hundred. Volume 16 – Eastern Azure’

  ~ By Kung Quan

### Chapter 105

> —Keen not to cross an eminent figure like Lord Fei, the old ancestors who wanted closer ties with the current heavens for various reasons pushed for a match between Shu Bao and Kong Meixiao, against the advice of many, including, it had to be said, Shu Bao’s own master. Thus, Song Jia, who had been convinced into agreeing to what was in effect a very lucrative marriage contract with Shu Bao, now found herself relegated to first concubine.
>
>
> At this stage, it must be stated that there were factions within the Shu Pavilion and the wider Shu clan on Eastern Azure who were deeply frustrated with this state of affairs, including Shu Bao’s master and the local Pavilion Master. Together, they directly petitioned Shu Bao’s father, stating that these matters were not auspicious and that Song Jia should be cut loose entirely, or just taken in as a disciple and the matter forgotten.
>
>
> Song Jia, for her part, also petitioned Shu Bao’s master, then various sect elders who had advocated for her and treated her well, citing that she wished to withdraw from the agreement. Her belief was that the Pavilion would act with decorum and respect the change in circumstances. She even returned all the gifts given and kowtowed six times before Shu Bao’s master in public, acknowledging her unworthiness for the match as a gesture of goodwill towards the face of the Shu clan.
>
>
> Unfortunately, she underestimated the shameless iron core of those around Shu Bao, who were under no illusions as to how ‘useful’ she would be to their scion’s future prospects and Shu Bao’s father stepped in in person. Those influential elders supporting Shu Bao, being well aware that he still desired Song Jia – despite being infatuated with the miss from the Kong clan – refused to consider an annulment or the proposals put forward, still wishing to curry favour with Lord Fei’s household. Song Jia’s rejection was painted as a personal rejection of Shu Bao and she was accused of having ‘unrealistic expectations’.
>
>
> Shu Bao’s parents, unwilling to disadvantage their most talented son and see such a rare core claimed by others, aligned with those elders and, left with no voice, Song Jia was forced to ‘honour’ the agreement she had been induced to acquiesce to and accompany Shu Bao.
>
>
> To add insult to injury, those elders, now emboldened and not wanting to pay out such advantages if Song Jia was not to be principal partner, took what they could back from the agreement, claiming that she had given them willingly, and so used her gesture of goodwill shamelessly against her, stating that as things currently stood, because Song Jia would not act as the suitable ‘tie’ to Shu Bao, it was not worth the sect’s investment.
>
>
>
> Most of the preparations for Song Jia’s wedding were repurposed by Lady Wenquian, Shu Bao’s mother and the bride’s grandmother, Lady Kong Fei Ling, and it was agreed that Song Jia would marry Shu Bao as a concubine when he exchanged vows with the miss from the Kong clan.
>
>

Excerpt from: ‘The Politics of the Heavenly Hundred. Volume 16 – Eastern Azure’

  ~ By Kung Quan

### Chapter 106

> The matters that followed the decision that Song Jia should marry Shu Bao as his concubine are, unfortunately, historically murky. We only know for certain what the end result was, and some of the twists in that, but the nuance is likely known only to a few elders, Song Jia, Shu Bao and a few others at this point. It does not help that it is only from these opposite sources that the narratives are presented, so both are included here that posterity may make up its own mind. About the only thing they *do* agree on is that days before the wedding, Song Jia returned to the sect, alleging that Shu Bao had mistreated her.
>
>
> Song Jia alleged that Shu Bao and his associates had, while drunk, gotten into a gambling competition with several other prominent young masters. Shu Bao was uncharacteristically unlucky, eventually losing enough that a youth from the Din clan – who also lusted after Song Jia – forced him into a position where he either had to kowtow towards him and call him grandfather or allow him to spend a night with Song Jia. Song Jia alleged that rather than lose face and kowtow, Shu Bao had handed her over and the young master from the Din clan had seized her Good Fortune Core, ruined her purity, used a fate locking art on her and given her back to Shu Bao to do with as he wished, as a ‘gift’ for his upcoming wedding.
>
>
> Shu Bao roundly refuted her account. Instead, he claimed that Song Jia had grown to despise him, despite all the privilege heaped upon her. That she had embarrassed him by dallying with other disciples at a gathering of their peers and that when confronted, she had grown hysterical and injured her own foundation. Several of his associates also testified that her tale was nothing but a fanciful slander concocted of various slanderous tales based on other politically motivated rumours to try to cover her shame.
>
>
> The Shu Pavilion’s Elder Hall convened; however, most of those records are, unfortunately, sealed. Various rumours persist, but what is known is that in the end, faced with contradictory reports, the majority of the Elders found Shu Bao’s account more compelling.
>
>
> Their judgement noted that no corroborating accounts of Song Jia’s allegations could be obtained, nor was there any evidence she was under any art. Song Jia had, however, sought repeatedly to extricate herself from Shu Bao, who while not always attentive, had been committed to the agreement and had acted with appropriate decorum. The final twist, however, came from Shu Bao’s mother, who alleged that the Shu Pavilion had not actually tested her purity before the engagement. Song Jia was examined in a degrading fashion before the Elder Hall and when this was revealed to be true, Shu Bao denounced her publically for breaking the contract between them.
>
>
> The Shu clan’s position was declared openly after that. Song Jia was beaten, all the benefits she had attained from the Shu clan were stripped from her and finally she was thrown out of the Pavilion on the orders of the Elder Hall, with no prospects, no worth and no cultivation.
>
>
>
> Later that month, Shu Bao married Kong Meixiao in a grand ceremony and both left Eastern Azure immediately on their honeymoon back to the Shu Heavenly clan.
>
>

Excerpt from: ‘The Politics of the Heavenly Hundred. Volume 16 – Eastern Azure’

  ~ By Kung Quan

### Chapter 107

> At this point, the scholar of these past events would be forgiven for thinking that this whole matter should be considered closed.
>
>
> Shu Bao, despite his eminent status, was just another young noble without much impression except for his family name, and no amount of proselytizing on Shu Bao’s behalf by his supporters ever really changed that. Song Jia on the other hand had been locally renowned, especially in the place of her birth, Burning Tiger Province. Her rise and her Core had been held up as a reflection of the hopes and dreams of a generation who wanted to believe that you could come from nothing and reach great heights on your own merits.
>
>
> Later propaganda has sought to obfuscate this narrative significantly, with some commentators even suggesting that the Shu clan or Shu Bao were responsible for her forming the very Core she lost; however, the depth of sentiment and the general suspicion surrounding the events never really vanished. Unfortunately, Song Jia was exiled and her prospects ruined, Shu Bao was diplomatically moved offside and those looking on barely had time to process matters before it had all transpired. This, however, is to overlook the salient point in all this, the objective of so many factions’ desires, Song Jia’s Good Fortune Core.
>
>
> At the time, many did buy the narrative that her Core was destroyed by self-sabotage, fully believing that there was no way that the Shu clan would let another retain that Core. However, no secret in a sect with serious politics ever remains truly buried. The undoing of the whole obfuscation had its roots in what was, it has to be said, a truly banal incident at the Shu Pavilion’s annual tournament the following year.
>
>
> During a preliminary round the disciple of one of the older ancestors, not part of the Elder Hall, was defeated in somewhat embarrassing fashion by one of Shu Bao’s associates while his fiancé was in attendance. Humiliated, he went to his senior brothers who, not at all impressed with Shu Bao in any event, were quite thorough, and in the process Shu Bao’s associate admitted that Shu Bao had made all his companions swear a heavenly oath. The seniors forced him to forswear that oath as penalty for humiliating their junior and in the process discovered that Song Jia, who was someone they had all had a great admiration for… had indeed been wronged in some capacity by Shu Bao’s actions.
>
>
> The result, of course, was that Shu Bao’s actions were re-examined, and with the majority of those sympathetic to him now travelling with him on his honeymoon, many other elders who held grudges over this – including Shu Bao’s own former master who had been humiliated by the events – found that Shu Bao had used Song Jia’s Core as a gambling stake and lost it to a junior from the Din clan.
>
>
>
> The senior ancestors, realising that a junior’s vices and the Elder Hall’s politics had cheated their sect out of a Good Fortune Core, directly enriching their biggest geopolitical rivals in the process, were infuriated. Given Shu Bao’s political status, and the fact that he had already, rather conveniently, departed on his honeymoon, there was little chance of him seeing any serious punishment – his sworn companions in the sect were not so lucky.
>
>

Excerpt from: ‘The Politics of the Heavenly Hundred. Volume 16 – Eastern Azure’

  ~ By Kung Quan

### Chapter 108

> In the aftermath of the various punishments handed out to the associates of Shu Bao, it would be fair to say that large portions of the Shu clan on Eastern Azure were beset by what scholars can only call selective amnesia. The name ‘Song Jia’ became taboo in many quarters and the elders of the Shu Pavilion appear to have made a fairly concerted effort at this point to ensure that, once the punishments were dealt with, the matter was not reported to the upper echelons in any great detail.
>
>
> Song Jia, for her part, vanished into obscurity and soon all eyes turned away from those matters to the more prescient question of the trials organized to determine which scion of the younger generation would stand upon the steps of the Heavenly Hundred Celestial Ranking.
>
>
> The Shu Pavilion and clans’ hopes had been placed upon Shu Bao, but with him now on his honeymoon tour of Shu clan lands on Northern Azure they were forced to look elsewhere. In the meantime the Din and Dun clans of Eastern Azure rapidly became frontrunners in the various competitions over the next few years to take that lauded spot and while there were several aspersions thrown towards the Din clan regarding Song Jia’s core, the clan denied everything and painted all the allegations as slanderous geopolitical rumourmongering.
>
>
> Like that, almost thirty years passed in the end, during which the competitions continued, until at last the frontrunners were sorted out as one of the Imperial Crown Princes, Dun Sheng; a talented young disciple from the Din clan, Din Fulao; Huang Zhang, a ward of the Imperial Empress and Jiong Jiaying, an exceptionally talented disciple from the Jade Gate Court.
>
>
> It was at this point that Shu Bao returned, in rather impactful fashion, declaring his own intention to enter the competition. In the intervening three decades his cultivation had risen to that of an Immortal and he made an immediate scene by duelling Huang Zhang, defeating him comprehensively and claiming his spot in that matter.
>
>
> Shu Bao then went on to successfully challenge Jiong Jiayang to a memorable duel in which neither combatant was able to gain any advantage for three days. After that, he challenged Din Fulao; however, before that match could occur, Din Fulao apparently suffered a qi deviation as a result of an earlier match with another challenger and had to go into seclusion, withdrawing from the competition to be replaced by Kong Bao from the Jade Gate Court.
>
>
>
> Shu Bao and Kong Bao duelled in a grand occasion, before the assembled Imperial Court, for the right to challenge Dun Sheng. Kong Bao was narrowly defeated thanks, it appeared at the time, to advances Shu Bao had made in the extra time he had been afforded after Din Fulao withdrew from the contest. After his victory, Shu Bao was thrown a large celebration within the Imperial Court for his remarkable return to prominence and feted widely both within and outside the Shu clan, during which his father announced that Shu Bao would become a Core Disciple of the Wise Gate of Supreme Law, the sect of which his wife was already part.
>
>

Excerpt from: ‘The Politics of the Heavenly Hundred. Volume 16 – Eastern Azure’

  ~ By Kung Quan

## Lewis Carroll

### Chapter 93

> “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
>
>
> “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
>
>
> “I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
>
>
> “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
>
>
> “—so long as I get *somewhere*,” Alice added as an explanation.
>
>
>
> “Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
>
>

-Excerpt from ‘Alice in Wonderland’

  By Lewis Carroll

## Elder Ling

### Chapter 5

> In few cases do we have more cause to be grateful, for the aforementioned difficulties of creatures born within the confines of the Yin Eclipse to leave the valleys of their birth, than with the various sub-species of ‘stalker’ – most notably the ‘tetrid stalker’.
>
>
> For a physical depiction of a tetrid stalker, refer to the attached illustration[2,3,4], but in addition to the obvious features note that while resembling both a scorpion and spider the tetrid neither produces webs nor has a stinger on its tail, although its carapace leans towards the armoured nature of the scorpion. As regards the ‘tail’, it is used to produce truly obnoxious area-denying clouds of acidic, paralytic venom and, being unique to the females of the species, is also a reliable means of determining the gender of the adults – male tetrids have only an elongated abdomen rather than a tail and so produce their more corrosive venom from their mouths instead.
>
>
> Physically, all tetrid stalkers are intimidating and intelligent – adept and cunning ambush predators from the moment they hatch and with an innate ability to manipulate feng shui. Juveniles are ‘merely’ hard to notice, moving in deceptive ways, but young adults and full adults can use qi-camouflage and minor illusion. Given their speed, their ability to conceal their presence and their dangerous venom, the suggested means of engaging adult tetrids is at range, with arts able to counteract their venom clouds – yang-aligned lightning, fire or water arts.
>
>
> However, the most dangerous characteristics of the tetrid stalker are not individual. The real terror of this sub-species comes from their colony coordination and the speed at which those colonies grow. Tetrid juveniles hatch at Qi Condensation and can stalk prey within minutes, being capable of reaching Golden Core and being considered 'adults' within only a few months under favourable conditions. Even worse, compared to those few remaining beyond the forbidden zone, the tetrids of Yin Eclipse communicate and control their colonies via a combination of pheromones and bestial Martial Intent rather than a sort of ancestral soul-link. Foreign tetrid queens are required to reach Nascent Soul to control their brood and Immortal before they can lay eggs that maintain this link, while those of Yin Eclipse, likely as a mutation induced by surviving in a place where active soul manifestation is impossible outside of one specific locale, can act as fully functional, and reproducing, queens at Golden Core.
>
>
>
> As such, the standing expectation for all hunters is that all nests be reported if found and if possible exterminated immediately, assuming it is possible to do so without danger to the hunter, especially in the outer valleys.
>
>

Excerpt from Beasts of Yin Eclipse, Volume 4.

  ~by West Flower Picking Town Hunter Pavilion Elder Ling.

## Ling Lingsheng, Lady Azure, Fairy Sovereign Sky Song

### Chapter 12

> Oh gilded land, the azure gem that is passed from hand to hand, how thy suffering leads your people to sorrow, forever beholden, by the virtue of their bounty, to the grasping hands of others.
>
>
> Like a lovely maiden, you are cursed to dance for old villains, unable to have freedom of your own, as they dream of your riches and woo you with smiles, promising you their sons with flattering words, when really, in their eyes, you are only for them.
>
>
> Foremost, your virtues are extolled from shining world to starless sea. Ten Thousand eyes adore you, Supreme Lords court you, Celestial Queens are entranced by you, and yet your gifts are your sentence, your mysteries your prison and your virtues the chains, woven in flowers, which bind you.
>
>
>
> Oh, how you must lament, that you, who are so fair, can evoke such ugly shades in all you see.
>
>

Excerpt from ‘The Azure Portrait’

  By Ling Lingsheng, Lady Azure, Fairy Sovereign Sky Song

## Ling Shao, Teaching Elder of the West Flower Picking Hunter Pavilion

### Chapter 20

> When you are making your way through the High Valleys between Thunder Crest and East Fury, do not be hasty or injudicious in your path. It is no exaggeration to tell you that you are, at any one time, no further than one hundred metres away from something that could kill you as easily as breathing. What will keep you alive is not your strength, or your spirit root, or your family name. It is knowing every fate-thrashed thing in this jade slab so well you can dream it backward and become the Dao Parent to its firstborn child.
>
>

Excerpt from ‘Survival in the Shadow of the Great Mount’

  ~By Ling Shao, Teaching Elder of the West Flower Picking Hunter Pavilion.

## Lu Fu Tao

### Chapter 24

> …When we first entered that inner place, the world was transformed, hidden in its essence from us, as if behind a pane of glass. All that we could see and breathe and touch was as if an illusion, cast by the greatest of hands. At first we feared this was some terrible trap, or that we had fallen into a place destitute in some fundamental aspect of its being. However, this was not the case.
>
>
> When we finally perceived the truth of it, I could only salute in four directions the person or persons who crafted this land, for crafted it absolutely is on some level. They are true masters of the ‘Simple Things’; their art, writ large upon the foundation of this place, is certainly unsullied by any lower purpose, remarkable in its simplicity yet breath-taking in its application. For our initial misjudgement, I can only apologise in my heart to them.
>
>
>
> Brother Ha has already filled five scrolls with his comprehensions regarding what we have so far seen. I can only lament the lack of bravery by which I missed the opportunity to bring some of the younger generation with us on this endeavour. What heights might they ascend to if they could see but a tiny portion of the wonder of this place.
>
>

*~*Excerpt from the personal writing of Lu Fu Tao.

## Lucius de Woll

### Chapter 30

> ...Among the most terrible, yet also prized resources that are available to us, as experts discerning the matters of the cosmos, are those waters that derive from the Star Ocean. Their innate strength is, it seems, an anathema to all living things, yet from them and only them can we truly see the purest fundamentals of the structures of being before they were, well, anything. To us mere mortals their presence is rarely a boon, yet to those who stand at the apex, it is a remarkable gateway to a new land, and one of the pillars upon which the dominance of our world has been built, enabling those with sufficient strength and reason to peer beyond the veils of reality and step across strange aeons and even arrive at that mythical final shore...
>
>

*Excerpt – Ad Astra, Quam Infinitum.*

*By Lucius de Woll, with compiled contributions.*

## Lucius Everkind, Emperor of the Imperial Commonwealth

### Chapter 29

> *I see thee dread shade, your foul sign upon this hungering dark.*
>
>
> *Though your hope was betrayed, to abomination you are wed.*
>
>
> *Speak your words, that I might know of your conviction.*
>
>
> *Show me your promised kingdom. Your so-called power. Your stolen glory.*
>
>
> *This land shall not relent to you, deceiver of hope.*
>
>
> *My Lady is with me, her favour upon my arm.*
>
>
> *My Lord watches over me, his blessing upon my blade.*
>
>
> *I do declare it, that we shall abandon you this day.*
>
>
>
> *Return thee to ruin, on behalf of our generations who fell here.*
>
>

From, The Matter of Evershire.

X-VII: Lucius Everkind, Emperor of the Imperial Commonwealth, faces the Prophet of the Yellow Mark on the eve of their historic battle before the Gateway to the Perilous Realm.

### Chapter 43

> Only an idiot of the calibre of Tyrus Belthorne could consider it a good idea to dig a mine on top of the Undren Mare without bothering to wonder what might happen if he managed to breach it. If there is mercy here, for the people of his lands now having to pay to put sewers in a mine they have never seen a penny of profit from, it is that his competence as fish bait has at least saved us all from hearing his mewling justifications and self aggrandising excuses.
>
>

*A comment on the demise of Tyrus, Belthorne, Ducal Prince of Belthorne.*

*~Apocryphally attributed to Lucius, Grand Duke of Everkind.*

## Sir Ludvig 'Undrenflayer' Karo

### Chapter 45

> ...If you ever have the choice between hiring some well connected young scions who have garnered some accolade in slaying goblins and bandits at their parents sponsorship, or a dozen veterans who have cut their teeth keeping mines and sewers clean of filth, I urge you to always pick the latter and do not skimp on their pay for their services. Certainly that 'noble youth' might get you some extra patronage, coin and be the toast of the ‘fine folk’ of your district. However, cities are rarely attacked by goblins and, it is beholden on me to remind you here and now that if your sewers have kobolds or worse in them you have bigger problems than some young adventurers can handle anway. On the other hand, every city with even a modicum of mana density and people practicing magic has mutates; spiders, rats, slimes and their ilk, alongside far too many old tunnels, reservoir pits and cellars abandoned to history over the centuries to make a savy city governeror sleep soundly at night.
> A few teams of veterans and experts who survived a decade or two of exterminating Undren spawned rats the size of dogs, clearing slime pits and exterminating spider nests tens of thousands strong and are still alive to show you their merit list may not be glamorous, be the toast of the ‘good folk’, come from a rich family or have a mythical sword; however, they will certainly ensure that one day you do not have to face those self-same ‘good folk’ in a riot over slimes corrupting your water courses, rats ruining their food sources and spiders bigger than dogs that are costing you fortunes in ward replacement and stealing children and livestock by the thousands.
>
>

*Excerpt from ‘On Good Principles of Provincial Governance’*

*~ By Sir Ludvig ‘Undrenflayer’ Karo, Master of Public Works and Safety for the Imperial Commonwealth.*

## *Grand Ducal Prince Ludvig Helech Staniswald Manaheim*

### Chapter 53

> *Rats! Rats! Motherfucking, Child Stealing Rats! Formation Eating Rat! SLIME SHAPED RATS! You are called here to brief this seat on the problems that are ruining the northern reaches of our duchy, of the elves that are raiding the sea ports for slaves and the bastard heretics in the mountains to the west. What of the war in the north, of our strike against that Everkind harlot and her whorespawn who usurped our Uncles Imperial Throne? Or an update on the campaign against the Sar Savages trying to plunder the ruins of Renwald?*
>
>
> *You are HERE TO BRIEF ME ABOUT REAL THINGS. ACTUAL THINGS! I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER WORD ABOUT THE FUCKING RATS IN THE SEWERS! Is that clear!*
>
>
>
> *They are just rats, we have investigated this time and time again. You blame every god forsaken problem on these rats; yet the motherfucking is just drunks, the Child stealing is probably some spiders, the formation eating is likely slimes, and you even admit here and now, that the SLIMES are pretending to look like rats. SO. IF. I. HEAR. ANOTHER. WORD. IN. THIS. COUNCIL. ABOUT. RATS. I WILL FEED YOU ALL TO THEM! Is that clear?*
>
>

Excerpt from the minutes of a council meeting between the Heir to the Grand Duchy of Manaheim and his father’s Advisory Council. *~Speaker, Grand Ducal Prince Ludvig Helech Staniswald Manaheim.*

## Marcella Junia, Senior Administrator of Undergrove

### Chapter 61

> However you do it, I want that Brood Pit of Clan Swarmblood sent to the Final Shore as an offering before sundown. *How* it escaped the attention of that avaricious moron Jerome Meltras, given they have Abzu water and an Elder Pond down there, I will never likely understand.
>
>
> If the opportunity presents, try to recover the Abzu water, but waste no lives on it. In any case, burn it with fire, bury it, gas it or if all else fails drown it. Thanks to that ignoramus Tyrus Belthorne we have no shortage of water in this horrid place now.
>
>
>
> You have carte blanche in this matter.
>
>

Marcella Junia, Senior Administrator of Undergrove on behalf of St. Roberta’s Academy.

  To: Lady Raleen Belmont, Commander in charge of Zone 7: Undrenmarsh, Undergrove.

## Rt. Honourable Lord Marcus De Roche

### Chapter 48

> ...Always two there are, a master and a disciple. Kill the master and the disciple will become a thorn in your side for millenniums after. Kill the disciple and the master will likely hunt your juniors to extinction and haunt your every endeavour like an evil spectre. Kill both, and you will find that the masters own master will become the devil that stalks your every shadow thereafter, until you are running from godly monsters and devilish gods and wondering where it all went wrong.
>
>
> This, if anyone ever askes is why only two people have ever broken into and out of that slaughter pit that the Robber Dukes made beneath the Dark Veils and the Perilous Realm. One, the Disciple who was captured on a whim and thrown in there for sport, and then the Master, who came seeking his lost charge and made a generation cry tears of blood for the waste within their ranks before all was said and done.
>
>
>
> Their prestige, like an inconvenient stone in the boot of history, was to be the crack that brought those old advisors plots to naught and finally set in motion the events that brought the Era of Unending War and our most brutal dynasty to an inauspicious end.
>
>

*Excerpt from ‘Annals of a Dark Age’*

*~By Rt. Honourable Lord Marcus De Roche*

## Marcus O'Firth

### Chapter 58

> The ancient region of Belel’Ethec. A land with an atrociously humid climate, steep mountains, dense sub-tropical jungles and deep caverns and an unusually wide variety of mendacious flora and fauna that follows the southern edge of the great savannah plains that run from the western shore of the Northern Continent, to almost its centre. This is the area about which we will talk in detail this chapter.
>
>
> Historically, it first came to prominence during the early efforts to colonise the wilderness regions on that side of the northern continent, before the first succession crisis turned everything on its head. When the dust of that first great schism of our two civilised continents settled, the region was left broadly in the configuration it is today. Its southern extremity controlled by the Grand Duchy of Abernathy, the north western portion within the territory of the Grand Duchy of Meltras and the eastern side wholly held by the Grand Duchy of Evershire.
>
>
> Since then, it has largely become famous as the second most troubled region in the entirety of the Northern Continent; exceeding the reputation of the border between Calingrad, Grey-Carrolan and the remaining marches of the Hibric Tribes for the honour of being the continents most hotly contested pile of trees and rock. The only reason it is not top of the list is because the Dark Veils are still, miraculously, a *thing*.
>
>
>
> The reason for this is threefold. Firstly, it is a land with a vast supply of Etheric Mana, one of the three major upwellings of it for the worlds Mana Tides in fact. Secondly, linked to this, it is remarkably rich in exotic flora and fauna. Its montane valleys with their cloud forests and sky piercing rock pillars, between which rivers wind, are home to all manner of curious magical plants rare and unique beasts. It is even home to some ancient vestiges that manifested with the origin of our world, -echoes of previous eras cast through time like skipping stones from the end of the Heroic Age. Thirdly, and probably most vexingly for many in power, it contains one of only two known entrances to the Undrenmare not under the control of either the Eternal City or Isla Dan’Autha
>
>

*Excerpt from ‘The Lands of the Northern Continent’*

*By Marcus O’Firth*

## Maria Renhallen, Saintess of Bright Wisdom

### Chapter 28

> "...The structure of worlds and dimensions is complex enough to have an *entire* librarluy filled out concerning it. As such, condensing it into this single talk, such as I endeavour to do here, is always going to leave matters open. However, I shall endeavour to do my scholarly best by the topic and keep you all awake in the process.
>
>
> There are three levels, usually: 'Lower Worlds', 'Middle Worlds' and 'Higher Worlds'.
>
>
> *Everyone* knows this.
>
>
> ‘Lower Worlds’, also sometimes known as 'Mortal Worlds'*,* are the most common... and the most constrained. Their energies are not any thinner than a 'Higher World', but the Principle that governs them can be tyrannical and almost impossible to shift.
>
>
> ‘Middle Worlds’*,* or 'Great Worlds'*,* are elevated above them. These are lands with higher dimensional range, more malleable energies. Their base line can, most usefully, be considered in the scale of those worlds of the 'Martial Axial Regions' of the Omni-Causal Construct, wherein they are oft called ‘Immortal Worlds’. Alongside them come 'Throne Worlds', These are basically 'Great Worlds', but their *Truth*, rather than developing naturally, has been either fashioned or refined by artificial means. 'Mortal Worlds' *elevated* a dimensional step, to that of 'Great Worlds', are *also* considered under this umbrella.
>
>
> The higher tier is separated into two informal layers. The lower one is the 'Supreme World', with which most of you will be familiar. These are to 'Great Worlds', as ‘Great Worlds' are to a ‘Mortal World'. They are *far* fewer in number, and cast long shadows, controlled as they are by Source Sovereigns, existences at the peak of the Venerate Step.
>
>
> At the peak are the jewels of the crown of the Omni-causal Construct. The 'Treasure Worlds' – *or realms*. These are rare beyond compare – *more precious even than the Regalia of the Divines*. Each one contains within it an *immutable* representation of a fundamental concept of the Causal Construct. *They* are the pillars upon which the very reality of the pyramid of worlds is stacked and indeed the most famous are called *'The Seven Pillars'*, after the seven tenets of wisdom. They are also held by many, who should really know better, to be the template from which the Mortal Coil of the Omni-causal Construct is cast and recast in full.
>
>
> What few know, is that *above* and *beyond* this... there *also* exist other places. Places of remarkable history and mystery. The 'Star Ocean', that ancient men called 'Abzu'. The 'Final Shore', to which *all things* eventually return. 'The Throne', 'The Silver Plain', 'Elysium', 'The Uncreated Place' and the 'Low Land' are all such domains.
>
>
>
> It is of *these* Seven, and *their* relationship to the Seven Pillars that I will talk to you about today."
>
>

*Introduction from ‘On the Order of The Realms’ – A talk to the Amaltharian Royal Academy*

  ~By Maria Renhallan, with contributions from Aris Belmont.

### Chapter 32

> There are two things you should never mix in the same storage environment, when dealing with large scale teleport arrays designed to go through multiple dimensional spaces. Unconstrained Spatial Condensate and Star Loci Crystals. People assume that time is quite linear, but really, to paraphrase the real experts in this field, when considered from a more non-linear, less subjective viewpoint, it’s more of a huge amorphous ball of wibbly wobbly stuff that can be very unpredictable and very suggestible when it wants to be.
>
>
> To this end, Unconstrained Spatial Condensate, or the liquefied space of the star ocean is also another such material of dubious causal integrity. As, for that matter is the energy focused within the heart of a Star Loci Crystal which is usually used to constrain dimensional anchors. Because time exists everywhere, except in very special circumstances, injudiciously combining the two latter materials in the presence of the former in an ad-hoc way almost always leads to what most experts would now call an ‘Anomalous Temporal Event’. These can vary from something as harmless as a bunch of morons from the future appearing to try to tell you how to make better long bows, to people trying all kinds of chicanery with your expensive teleport gate involving looping paradoxes and inadvisable genetic experiments with their own ancestors. In short, If you are ever caught storing the two in the same place, we *will* hunt you down and we *will* make you regret your life choices in ways you *will* never forget.
>
>
> I’ll reiterate, even though I opened this lecture with this point. More chaos has been caused over the years by accidental ‘Anomalous Temporal Events’ relating to Greater Teleport gates than any other single source besides those muthafucking candles and Wish scrolls.
>
>
>
> This, incidentally, is also why blue telephone boxes and the opening of takeaways on inauspicious days of the lunar calendar in odd numbered years are outlawed in 123 of 129 extant powers in our lands. The remaining six either don’t believe in the colour blue, live on a moon that doesn’t have its own moon, have no concept of non-linear time, or are an eldritch spore plague. Making them statistically unlikely, or functionally incapable of being responsible for, or party to, any such events. Also nobody has ever managed to work out a way to make the Eldritch Spore Plague sign binding legal documents, but that is a topic for another lecture.
>
>

*From orienteering lecture series on Teleportation Gates. Final year students at the Academy of Unified Magic’s of Amaltharia.*

*~By Maria Renhallan.*

### Chapter 51

> Of the many supreme scriptures that have emerged across the eras, the Seven Classics; ‘Mountain and Sea Scripture’, ‘River Chart Scripture’, ‘Original Extinction Scripture’, ‘Heaven Breaking Scripture’, ‘Vast Expanse Primordial Gestation Scripture’, ‘Red Dust Scripture’ and ‘Bright Fortune Scripture’ are perhaps the most entrancing and coveted, if only to those who know little about them.
> This is In part, because the scholars of this era seem to have a fascination of dwelling on the greatest of this, and the most supreme of that. These seven, abstract and basically unattainable as they are, have become the crown jewels in a strange game of hagiography and revisionism. They are coveted and highly regarded in many places where they really shouldn’t be, thanks in no small part to the desire to put labels on everything and fit everything into its place, and yet at the same time, vexatiously neglected in several where they really should be standard texts. In no small part due to those self-same scholars desperately seeking them insisting on putting shiny labels like Heavenly, Supreme, Divine or Celestial on things that have no business being anywhere near them.
>
>

*From the foreword of ‘The Books of Heaven and Earth’*

*~By Maria Renhallan*

### Chapter 57

> The desire of those later generations to take the understandings of their peers and repackage them anew is one thing, all new things are built on the foundations of the old after all. To open up the Circles of Power to all is not a thing to be decried, nor is it wrong to want all who walk our lands to prosper and be the best that they can. What is wrong however, is to do this at the cost of the depth of those systems of old. Now, the truths enshrined within those fundamentals are largely hidden away. In Supreme Magisters' ivory towers, in the vaults of Imperial Schools or the personal libraries of Dukes and Kings. Poured over by handpicked scholars and sages or bartered between powers like hogs for slaughter or treated as curious specimens to dissect.
>
>
> In their place kingdoms have raised up their own systems, scholarly masquerades presented as holistic truth. Things with just enough within them to give their people means and their nations strength, yet all the while spreading misconception in the name of opportunity and deceiving with the aim of control.
>
>
> Every man and woman may cast spells on the street, uses techniques in their daily work and has artefacts within their homes, but how many could tell you why their techniques and abilities do what they do? They teach the poor systems to which only the mighty of their land hold the keys and are lauded for it. Even worse, those self-same powers summon children from other skies and give them power clad in facades they can recognise. They make games, challenges and achievements of what was once hard won wisdom and grim endeavour. All this, they do in the name of control, and yet, in doing so all they have created are facades within facades that obfuscate and dilute until the names we give to things mean next nothing except to those who hold the strings.
>
>
>
> And yet, at the heart of this, the ones who pay the price are our future generations, who having been told, through these systems that they have power, never realise that it is no better than embroidery and fancy medals without any meaning or achievement.
>
>

Excerpt from a remnant (burned) copy and translation of ‘La Grande Façade’

  ~ By Maria Renhallan, Saintess of Bright Wisdom.

## Marius Renhallen

### Chapter 50

> While your proposals are all very well, it is usually the council that reminds the monarch, not the other way around.
> The only things more dangerous than a Crystal Locoi mine, is a Locoi mine dug in a hurry, or a Locoi mine dug in a hurry by people who want to keep it secret. If you wish to know the consequences? Just go ask the people of Renwald. Except, you likely won’t find any, because that kingdom is now drifting amid our planet's now somewhat more extensive ring system. Periodically entertaining people across three continents as seasonal meteor showers and really not serving as anywhere near as prominent reminder as it should apparently as to why greedy idiots and mana veins don’t mix.
>
>

*Excerpt from public records on the 4th debate on the expansion of the deep delvings on the southern border of Renhallan*

*~Marius Renhallan, 10th Emperor of Renhallan*

*speaking to elected officials bringing forward new proposals.*

## Martel Caelan, Chronicler of Avamoor

### Chapter 95

> Few places have elicited such furore and bloodshed by sideways means as the lingering rumours surrounding the heart of the ‘Darklands’ in the Great Savannah. The Gate of Sun, as it was known to the first settlers of the plains who came from the Eternal City, was, even then, a place that held profound mysteries. Though the best scholars of this era are fairly categorical that they never made it further east than the Solaneum, the seat of their ancient compact with the Queens of the Hibric tribes, those who came after were in turn fascinated, desirous and envious of what fruits they found and the rumours of what they might have hidden away while we were still trying to fight our way into the passes of Avamoor on the far side of that ancient domain.
>
>
> Much has been said elsewhere about the horror wrought by the decadence and desperation of the fading embers of the Eternal City’s glory years and the early shadow of tyranny that slunk back south to the Dominion of Old Kingdoms, soon to be reformed from the ashes of the Succession War. Instead, I will talk here about one of the most enduring siren calls of calamity that arose out of that era.
>
>
> *Yogo Shada.*
>
>
> When the first brave pioneers seeking fortune and new horizons arrived in those lands, even before the High King of Carrolan had drafted the proclamation for the land’s rightful liberation from chaos all they found was ruin and enigma. Starting with Solaneum, all the cities were devoid of life and everywhere the chaotic savagery of the clay-bound demon spawn of the sorcerer lords of ancient Ur’Mammon ran unchecked. What enclaves of men remained were besieged on the coast, their lords long fled and their treasures already resting in Old Kingdom vaults.
>
>
> It is there that we can first trace the persistent rumours of ‘Yogo Shada in the West’ to something more than the ravings of drunken lunatics lost in their libraries of mouldering scrolls. Before that war, there was little knowledge of those savage folk in that land. If they existed at all they were likely purged by devilish elvish spears or Sovereign Steel of the Old Kingdoms and the riddle of their reappearance would eventually lead to persistent rumours of the ‘Totem of Vash’, long associated with the ancient sorcerers of that ancient era and the means by which they held dominion in that ancient era.
>
>
>
> The second echo of that fabled place came in fact from those silent cities themselves, for they turned out to be anything but – within them, their occupants still lingered, remnant shades bound between life and death in a deathless struggle against all who might fall to defilement. Eventually, our mighty mages succeeded in sealing them away, but when they did, they found again, at the root of that malignancy born of desperate men, echoes of another ancient tale of that era – ‘The One Language’.
>
>

Excerpt from ‘The Enduring Myth of Yogo Shada’

  ~By Martel Caerlan, Chronicler of Avamoor.

## Menoc of Tyre

### Chapter 69

> …Among the greatest disasters of that bygone era that is sometimes called the ‘Ancient Time’ or ‘The First Era’, the emergence of the ‘Defilers’ stands out as a truly inauspicious moment for those of us determined to catalogue the path from them until now. Our ancient ancestors were quick to point towards the ‘Barbarism’ of the Ur’Khal and the ‘Pride’ of the ancient peoples of Earth, Sea and Sun for emergence of this blight, but like all such things, the reality is never simple. While the truth of those times will likely never be truly known, at least to us, who come so long after – history suggests that we should have stood with them to quash that cancerous thing evoking the darkest nightmares of our devil and demons before it could truly rise.
>
>

Excerpt from ‘On the Origins of Darkness’

  By Menoc of Tyre

### Chapter 70

> …Instead—our ancestors saw in this moment an opportunity to rise for themselves. To turn on their leaders, reject the old alliances they had wrought in favour of the more inward-looking philosophies of ‘Power’ and ‘Glory’. They saw the plight of those others, who had long frustrated their desire to expand, and rather than see the greater evil rising, chose to kick them while they were down. Believing that *they* were better than the Ur’Khal, our ancestors took from the Peoples of Sun and Sea even as Earth and Sky fell into their own ruin, consumed by their circumstances. They saw the strength of the Ur’Khal, made by the great shaper of lives we now call Keramos of Ur broken, and rejoiced—for again it gave them means to expand their own influence.
>
>

*Excerpt from ‘On the Origins of Darkness’*

*By Menoc of Tyre*

### Chapter 71

> As a result, The Great Defiler survived – Mo’Kratha fell and his great rival Orcus was ruined by it. Tarantis was damned through it and Akalaraltis rose from shadow through it. However, our ancestors cared not, for this was a problem of the other races and they were mighty now having raised up their great Tyrant, the Creator of Lives. It was only when Neron, Emperor of the Eternal City, rose in the chaos after the end of the Heroic Age that those ancient ancestors who pulled the strings realised their folly. But by then it was far, far too late – for Neron and those around him, who even *then* men called debauched and depraved, lacking as they were in so many ways and destroying and perverting all they touched, became the template for our own damnation.
>
>

*Excerpt from ‘On the Origins of Darkness’*

*By Menoc of Tyre*

### Chapter 72

> …The ‘Fall of an Era’, the ‘End of Tyranny’, the ‘Triumph of Good Men’ – these were all used to describe the day that Neron, Emperor of the Eternal City, met his end, assassinated in his bath even as he cavorted with a dozen slaves.
>
>
> Who killed him? Was it his mother, jealous that the young Emperor turned his attentions elsewhere? Was it his sibling children, who had sunk even further into depravity than he, seeking a new depth to plumb? Was it his exiled father – broken and ruined, his lineage in tatters seeking one final, desperate moment of catharsis? Was it his bodyguards – finally unable to stomach his depredations on that day as opposed to some other? Or was it some other, unseen and overlooked, a new slave, or a peerless expert of any hundred families who had *suffered* at his hands?
>
>
> In the end, we will likely never know, and perhaps it is unimportant, for while so many claimed responsibility for it then, few would speak of it now.
>
>
>
> For with his death, the ‘Nightmare of Neron’ did not end. In truth, it simply *began*.
>
>

*Excerpt from ‘On the Origins of Darkness’*

*By Menoc of Tyre*

### Chapter 101

> …Much can be said of the turning points in those dark days, the seeds of many evils long forgotten and many more yet to come lie in the fallow fields of Jerikhal, Valinkar and Solaneum, in the allure of Yogo Shada and the keening promise of objects like the ‘Sempronius Dagger’ or the ‘Tears of Solace’.
>
>
> Yet, most compelling as a turning point, is an almost forgotten footnote to the great Ritual of Solaneum and the assault of the old powers afterwards: the *second* Sack of Portam Aurorae and its true obliteration, an event we *only* know happened because barbarian prisoners of the Ur folk spoke of it and a solitary record was discovered much later by happenstance.
>
>
> The acknowledged narrative has been that after the survivors fled, the Prophetess of Orcus hid in shadow and the dark curse became stronger, until at last it was revealed by Laurentius; however, unlike others of the Nine Cities, like Merovin or Arleth – which also died silently, only Portam Aurorae was mute – her tale told through those few souls who fled it, and whose accounts, in light of later events, can only be considered deeply suspect on many levels given they counted both Menacanthus, Bishop of Simaris, and the eminent statesman of the nine cities Quintullus Karius Valtus among their number – both of whom were pivotal in its refounding as Solaneum some years later after the failed Old Kingdom expedition.
>
>
> One account, though, does linger, and this draws me back to this event as perhaps the most overlooked point in this dark conflict, for with it, suddenly a great many other things come into question, and three disturbing things are revealed: firstly that Portam Aurorae was sabotaged from within not once, but twice, secondly that those who told its narrative were likely the culpable parties, and lastly that they did so to hide the link between the second sack and the rise of two other evil cults, far more long-lasting than that of the Mystery of Orcus: the ‘Blood Eclipse’ and the ‘Brothers of Life’ who would later become the ‘Longevity Cult’ that so plagued our more recent history.
>
>
>
> In this tome, a first-hand account of the last days of Portam Aurorae, originating with a prisoner in a small hibric tribe that eventually found its way to a scriptorium in Carrolan, it is told that five others like Cornelia also existed and were imprisoned, and that later, the retreating forces of Lord Consul Halicarus took with them five prisoners, *none* of them Cornelia (explaining her absence from many narratives, or unconvincing inclusion at this time), and vanished into the hills – obliterating or taking with them every written record of the town they could. The account then goes on to say that during his captivity, he saw first-hand two groups of barbarians captured by that tribe who had a supply of blood, of a powerful and dark aura, that were stored in pots from the shrine complex in Portam Aurorae…
>
>

*Excerpt from ‘On the Origins of Darkness’*

*By Menoc of Tyre*

## Myo Gwan Sung

### Chapter 36

> *…*Of the Great Trials by Fire, perhaps the most famous, or infamous, is that presented in the previous aeonspan by the ‘Empress who Broke the Heavens’. It is *famous* because usually such trials are limited only to the younger generation; however, the Empress’s trial was made open to all who wished to challenge it, so long as they were below the realm of Dao Ascension. The rewards for succeeding were all treasures from her personal collection, so it goes without saying that the pride of ten thousand worlds attempted to challenge it. In the end, twelve victors were crowned and won tokens of personal favour from the Empress who, considering the trial a great success, had then returned to her seclusion – leaving others none the wiser as to why she had even held it.
> It is *infamous* because only bloodshed and carnage has followed the possessors of those twelve talismans since then. Shortly after the trial ended, as people tried to make sense of its goals, strange rumours and theories started to circulate that assembling all twelve is in fact the Empress’s true test. and that the one who claims all of them and stands before her will be acknowledged as her successor. As far as anyone is aware, the Empress has never interceded for any of the original talisman holders, and in the intervening aeons what was originally unfounded speculation seems to have become largely taken as fact, or at least something close enough to it. Subsequently various influences, having started to covet those relics, have waged various bloody wars and dark deeds, fuelled by those ideas. Currently, all but three of the talismans are accounted for. Those missing, their original possessors never knowingly robbed or slain, are the ‘Heaven Shifting Scale’, ‘Heaven Seizing Loom’ and possibly the most precious, the ‘Heaven Breaking Talisman’. As to the others, two are currently held by the Heavenly Ming, three by the Heavenly Kong, one by the Heavenly Tang, one by the Shu Heavenly clan, one by the Heavenly Solace Society and one by the Longevity Cult…
>
>

*Excerpt from ‘The Treasures of Heaven’*

*~By Myo Gwan Sung.*

## Mo Shurian, Ancient of the Mo People

> The only thing worse than trying to eradicate a mutant, fungus infestation that learned to cultivate is discovering that they got religion and started a cult somewhere along the way and then got into politics as a side line. Truly they are a plague for our times.
>
>

*~ Mo Shurian, Ancient of the Mo People.*

## Mu Sanshu

### Chapter 63

> To truly survive the rigours of these Great Worlds, a sect, school, power or a clan requires two things. Firstly it requires wealth and all the blessings that brings – be it wealth of connections, wealth of talent, wealth in spirit jade or wealth in Good Fortune. The second though, which is often misunderstood, is that it requires an iron core. A force that can be considered not simply the strength of a sect, but its root, akin to the spiritual root of any cultivator. The purpose of this core, however, is not to lord it over others, or to act as some great threat, but to deliver accumulation that the first, wealth, is unable to. There are things you cannot buy with money, or chance upon by good fortune or truly claim through connections or even the control of the heavens themselves.
> This is why we prize those who rise up from lower worlds so highly. They do not bring wealth that our clans do not already have, nor do they bring much strength nor even much good fortune, truth be told. It is not even that they bring an understanding of the torment of the path, of clawing out every gain against an unwilling world and not succumbing – even this can be trained. What they bring is a pure accumulation, a strength properly forged between the anvil of reality and the hammer of mortality, tempered by the fate-shattering tribulations required to rise up from those mortal worlds. An understanding that in the end you cannot step back, cannot hide behind your wealth, or behind the veil of your heavens, that eventually there are no more teachers to call, no more qi to wield. That in the end it is simply you against the world, and it will not give you a second chance.
>
>

  ~From the personal writings of Mu Shansu, shortly before he vanished.

## Qiao Honghui

### Chapter 2

> …The politics of the periphery across the sea, locally called ‘Yin Eclipse’, is perhaps best described as a pyramid. At the top are the branches of our noble clans and heroic settlers whom his Majesty’s Imperial Grandfather sponsored from our Imperial continent and who, with the ongoing support of our August Imperial Throne since that time, have endeavoured to bring enlightened civilisation to this difficult land.
> Below them are those who arrived in their wake, seeking to exploit the opportunities provided, yet well-meaning and capable of following the tenets of the Blue Morality to the best of their capacity, limited though it is by their innate disposition. Below *them* are those who have cast aside their misguided ideas of a ‘heritage’ and made some mediocre effort, through the generous and beneficent means granted to them by the Imperial Court, to better themselves. At the bottom are the indigenous, who have resisted most opportunities we have afforded them and at best are apathetic to our Majesty’s rule – living in towns and villages but barely embracing anything beyond this that might make them less savage – and at worst have even been known to provoke outright rebellion against the Imperial Mandate…
>
>

Excerpt – A report on the current situation to the east of Blue Water City to the Imperial Court.

  ~ By Imperial Envoy to Blue Water Province, Duke of Qiao, Dun Qiao Honghui.

### Chapter 14

> To the August Office of the Imperial Seat,
>
>
> As requested, I provide the assessment of the Ling clan.
>
>
> For all their status as high nobility, the Ling clan have diluted their strength too much in the pursuit of their many ambitions. As such, they are second oldest to the Ha, cupbearer to the Cao, lesser partner to the Kun and Deng in their respective enterprises, though not for lack of effort. They are an unproblematic minority in the Hunter Bureau, who, thanks to them, have actually been leaning *towards* our side in recent times, and a competent middle order in the Military Authority. They have not achieved much acclaim and largely ceased vying for it, for their scions are largely untalented, with a few exceptions, like the vice-headmistress of the Blue Gate School, who is a Dao Lord who barely transcended her generation upon becoming a Dao Immortal and a notable regional beauty.
>
>
> Even in their handling of the censure of the Lin School, they have been rather lacking. A decisive intervention *might* have caused our agenda some issues; however, as it stands, their preservation of the mostly loyal elements of the Lin clan gives us more benefits than demerits *and* shows ‘mercy’ on the part of the court, reining in an overzealous and naive if *entirely* justified prince.
>
>
> Special Investigator Dun Mofan has, I can only assume, given you a rather naive interpretation of events, in comparing them to the Din clan’s hand seventy years ago, as your letter implied I might. There are, I concede, a lot of similarities with regards to their conduct as a stabilizer of regional politics. Yet, unlike the Din, the Ling clan, I can only say, is simply lacking in teeth. They are, if I might use a phrase, truly a ‘second-class clan’, forced into neutrality and self-preservation to stave off decline and ruin.
>
>
> Investigator Mofan implied their passivity was an obfuscation and that their ‘decline’ after the ‘Year of the Blood Eclipse’ is misleading, but in truth, this is the hard work of many years of successful subtle Imperial action engineered towards causing the Ling clan to distance themselves from their loyalties to the Azure Astral Authority – which he gave little focus to, as the enclosed documents hopefully illustrate.
>
>
> If anything, I suggest we provide some small support to the Ling at this time, not distance them. If they can be brought more to our side, like the Kun have, with their links to Nine Moons Province, it will only further weaken the hand of the Azure Authority, at a time when the Cao clan is weak, in some enticing ways.
>
>
>
>   Your Loyal Servant, Duke Qiao, Dun Qiao Honghui.
>
>

Letter from Qiao Honghui to the Imperial Seat, shortly after the Three Schools Conflict.

## Qin Qiu, Royal Scholar of Qin

### Book 1 Prologue

> …As you are no doubt aware, the Hunter Bureau, one of our Bureaus of State, fulfils two important tasks on behalf of our Dun Imperial Dynasty. The first is somewhat unglamorous: the sourcing and securing of rare spirit plants, beasts and other natural curiosities that might otherwise languish beyond their sight. The second is to serve as the bastion of expertise which keeps in check the most dangerous aspects of our world’s natural threats. As such, we, as citizens of the Imperial Dynasty, should be deeply concerned with the strange state of affairs that has emerged across the ocean in this land, where the influence of our August Emperor and Imperial Dynasty has been resisted, twisted and refuted with depressing regularity and where the corrupt tendrils of the Azure Astral Authority still have some unfortunate hold over the Bureaus of State.
>
>
> I have, let me assure you, read several eminent and trustworthy accounts that describe the disturbing instances where young children are now being enrolled into the Bureau’s ranks. Even this might be fine, were they such as the upstanding scions of our own Imperial continent, Young Heroes of the hour who will one day stand at the apex of our great sects and be the strength of the Imperial Throne, but no! These are common or lowborn people with cultivations as limited as Golden Core. People without means, method, status or pedigree. Others are unworthy children of local nobility, allowed through corruption and base nepotism to ascend to ranks such as Deputy Bureau Chiefs and Senior Local Bureau Officials. Some, most shockingly and worryingly, are not even cultivators, but follow the debased and deeply flawed system which I discussed in detail at the close of the previous volume (Volume 82: On The Cultivation Practices of Indigenous Peoples: Considering Their Merits).
>
>
>
> While, as a scholar of history, I can appreciate that in certain times there is a need to remake rules – we need only look at the Astrology Bureau or the Authority Bureau to see models as to how this can be done correctly – I feel it is beholden upon me to state clearly, for the future posterity of these institutions and their role in supporting our Imperial Dynasty, that no good can come of these matters. Allowing lowly persons without rank or means to advance by shortcut and hand-waving through the ranks without consideration to their cultivation realm, let alone the indigenous who actively work against our August Emperor…
>
>

Excerpt from 'A Treatise on Eastern Azure Great World, in 100 Volumes'

### Chapter 21

> …Frequently when you interrogate the pages of history, it will turn out that even the most remarkable turning points can have truly banal origins. The demise of the mendacious Heavenly Dawn Sect, the tragic death of Venerate Murong, the decision by the Ancestors of the Seven Sovereigns Hall to eliminate the heirs of Dun FaoLong… all these decisions had their origins in single, simple actions where the unenlightened did not show respect for the strength of our world's destiny, tried to go against the fates for their own personal agendas and were humbled as a result… Our current generations would do well to understand these lessons, I feel, especially those rebellious young ladies of Teng and Kai who have made such scenes of late, showing little appreciation of the Grace of our Heavens in this era and the benevolence of our Great Imperial House’s shade…
>
>

Excerpt – A Treatise on Eastern Azure Great World, in 100 Volumes

## Qing Fei Cui, Chronicler of Nine Moons

### Chapter 100

> If we speak of the great tragedies and misfortunes to befall sects in this generation that have had echoes far beyond their origins, many will talk about the deep embarrassment that Di Ji caused to so many, or the misfortune that befell the duke of Green Cliff province; however, the one that most stands out to me, as a scholar of history, as one whose repercussions still linger today, especially for our own Nine Moons sect, is the downfall of ‘Good Fortune Saintess’ Song Jia, from Burning Tiger Province.
>
>
> While her name has largely fallen out of memory, except by those who were around at the time, hers was the last *true* ‘Good Fortune Core’ that has emerged in recent times.
>
>
> She made her name during the disasters and upheavals of eight millennia ago, and such was her fame and standing that she eventually attracted notable attention, from a noble scion of the Shu clan named Shu Bao, who set out to court her. At that point, she had already formed her core, which was how she acquired her name, or moniker.
>
>
> The events that transpired after that are rather murky, but the gist of it is that she took part in many trials with Shu Bao and his companions while he wooed her, but in the end she had split with him. Later she showed up at the doors of Shu pavilion, alleging that Shu Bao had mistreated her and given her away as part of a lost gamble and that she had lost her purity and her potential to a sworn brother of Shu Bao’s from the Jade Gate Court.
>
>
> Had things been properly investigated then, disaster might have been averted, but as it was, she was publicly shamed and denounced by those around Shu Bao. He refused her entrance to the pavilion and his large following slandered her and assaulted her with foul words, calling her a whore, deceiver and mendacious woman, even bringing forth witnesses to her purported impropriety before throwing her out. When she petitioned the elders, they turned her away and she was basically chased away in disgrace.
>
>
> Eventually, however, one of the older ancestors did, apparently, make a cursory investigation, persuaded, so the story goes, by his own disciple after Shu Bao’s flunkies beat him and embarrassed him and his fiancée in sect tourney. That investigation did *indeed* show that the pitiable Song Jia’s allegations had merit.
>
>
> Unfortunately, and again, hindsight has not been kind to this position. Because of politics and his background, Shu Bao was barely punished and simply sent back to the Shu clan. Their justification was that it was excessive to abolish the cultivation, even temporarily, of a serious talent over an independent cultivator who was only at the Golden Core realm.
>
>
>
> Those elders of the sect, somewhat blinded by circumstance it must be said, also judged that, robbed of her core, her purity, and her reputation, Song Jia would become an irrelevance and so they simply made some payment to her family and left it at that…
>
>

Excerpt from ‘the broken court – four decisive events that have shaped our generation’

  ~by Qing Fei Cui, Chronicler of Nine Moons

## Scholar Qing Qingshi

### Chapter 10

> The enduring lay reverence for the four ‘Cardinal Courts of Celestial Fate’, and occasional lack thereof, has as much to do with the political narrative associated with lineages who claim descent from them as it does their wider roles within society. Everyone reveres the Three Pure Ones and the Heavenly Maiden of Celestial Creation, but of the four Queen Mothers it is only the Queen Mother of the West who receives widespread reverence among the laity almost irrespective of where you go on Eastern Azure Great World.
>
>
> Socially, this is partly down to accessibility. The Queen Mother of the North represents the esoteric mysteries of the samsara and the balance therein, while the Queen Mother of the South, her opposite, espouses its extremes, Life and Death. Both have their role in our lives, but outside of questions of birth and death, or musings on the profundity of nature and its fickleness, neither linger long in the mind or the heart. The Queen Mother of the East… is more contentious, mostly because her auspice relates to the experience of life – specifically the idea of ‘red dust’ and karmic judgement – but rarely in ways that make for easy, or socially acceptable, worship.
>
>
> By contrast, the Queen Mother of the West, who also patronizes the ‘experience of life’, focuses more on honour, piety, family, good fortune and prosperity in your current and future lives… something almost everyone, from any walk of life, can get behind, and about which people obsess on a daily basis.
>
>
> It is the politics, however, where things get truly interesting, especially on our own Eastern Azure Great World. Here, the patronage of the Queen Mother of the West extends to the very highest echelon, in ways none of the others now do, for the Blue Morality Empress originated with the Huang Heavenly Clan, who claim a deep ancestral connection to the Queen Mother of the West.
>
>
>
> The other three, however, all have closer associations with powers opposed to both the Huang and also the Kong Heavenly Clan who support Eastern Azure’s Imperial Court through Blue Morality Emperor. As such, those three have, in many parts of the world, been supplanted by the cults relating to the Wise Emperors of Shu, Huang and Kong.
>
>

Excerpt from – The Celestial Paradigm and the Four Courts of Heaven on Eastern Azure.

  ~By Scholar Qing Qingshi.

### Chapter 13

> Just as there are multiple ‘Queen Mothers’, one for each cardinal direction, so too are there multiple ‘Wise Emperors’, each broadly representing a particular virtue espoused by the ‘Grandfather of Heaven’, the Great Emperor of Heavenly Jade and True Prince of Pure Felicity, who is their spiritual senior and the source from which they draw much of their moral authority.
>
>
> On Eastern Azure, the celebration of the Grandfather of Heaven falls on the fourth and fifth day of the week between years. On these days, families, clans and sects come together, to honour their ancestors and lineages, and give thanks to the filial piety of their descendants.
>
>
> The common rituals of this two day festival start formally, during or after sunset on the fourth day of the week, with a dinner, where, after a day of celebrations, the children will cook a meal for their parents, an affirmation of filial piety that is the core of all honouring of ancestors. At dawn between the fourth and fifth days, there is traditionally a ritual to honour the Grandfather of Heaven as the adjudicator of all Good Fortune on behalf of the ‘Celestial Venerable of the Primordial Beginning’, then, at noon, a ceremony where descendants and disciples will present proof of their year’s industry to their family, sect or clan, followed by a further grand banquet where ancestors salute the achievements of their successor generations. Traditionally, this is when successors are appointed, sects announce their recruitment for the coming year and divinations for the year ahead are pronounced formally.
>
>
>
> In that line, much like the Empress performs a grand ceremony to the Queen Mother, so does the Emperor, on the evening of the second day of the festival, lead a grand banquet honouring the founder of the Dun dynasty, the mythical Dun Fang, a figure who, so the stories tell, overthrew the very heavens themselves to build a better future for Eastern Azure before ascending to even greater heights as a follower of the Wise Emperor of Celestial and Heavenly Kong.
>
>

Excerpt from – The Celestial Paradigm and the Four Courts of Heaven on Eastern Azure.

  ~By Scholar Qing Qingshi.

## Quanluo, Imperial Scholar of Shan

### Chapter 6

> The question of ruins in Yin Eclipse is an interesting one. There are, once you start poking beneath the surface, a remarkable number of them, and almost, it must be said, as many questions. For anyone who has spent any time in that ghastly place, it is immediately clear that it is not somewhere at all hospitable, even on the outer edges, and rife with danger—
>
>
> [Section missing]
>
>
> What does stand out, however, is that there are some unusual patterns that show up. Ruins cluster oddly, and despite there being a plethora of artefacts that come out of them, it is almost a running joke among scholars who follow such things that each is more aggressively mundane than the last.
>
>
> Yes, there are tombs, and there are strange shrines and all the things you see in the other great ruin-field of Eastern Azure, the Burning Tiger Mountains on the Western Shu continent, but most of them are part of the bedrock of Yin Eclipse itself. Yes, later ruins build on top of these, and yes, there are occasionally dazzling finds, but the reality is that what we find, in Yin Eclipse, is the lost record of a people who lived. Their pottery, their workshops, occasionally their weapons and the like, all of them beautiful works of art, but all thoroughly mundane except for one enticing riddle – they repel qi, soul sense and any other means of investigation.
>
>
>
> The question of who made them, and how, is thus both alluring and frustrating in equal measure, though I shall, in this treatise, endeavour to shed some light on this matter from both my own research, and that of others…
>
>

Partial Fragment\* from: ‘A treatise on the ruins of Yin Eclipse: A re-appraisal’

  ~ By Imperial Scholar of Shan, Quanluo

## Rahul Sar'Lazeer

### Chapter 68

> Perhaps the greatest cultural difference between our lands upon the coast of the southern continent and the vast savannah interior is ‘diplomacy’. Up north we are used to dealing with the machinations of the Holy Empire and the Imperial Commonwealth or the raiding of the Jom and Hath, where words mean nothing and written words mean even less. However, to the people of the southlands, it is actually the spoken word, the names given to things which hold the greatest worth, not the scripts of lesser things that came later. They venerate the five, specifically the Maker and the Shaper – both beings of ancient times that have a long history with the ‘worth’ of words.
> We say what is expedient in the moment and then do what is expedient later, expecting others to move to our pace, just as we must move to the pace of those further north. We comfort ourselves by telling tales of their barbarity, their illiteracy and their crude lifestyles, that their words are not equal to our texts and our laws, and yet they will never see it this way, because to them, we are the ones who have cast aside the honour of the past, abandoned the path of our most ancient forbears, in return for the paltry comfort of words of our own invention.
>
>

It is little wonder that our dealings with them have become so fraught over the millennia.

  ~Excerpt from the writings of Rahul Sar’Lazeer

## Reginald Makepeace, Milford Scholar

### Old Chapter 21

> …The war waged beneath the earth against those foes that arose, born seemingly of the purest darkness. For the men and women who descended into the depths to fight them, their war was a most frigid thing, and when the surface incursion came it sorrows me to say that we have had no other moment in our recorded history of the Commonwealth of our Nations to compare it to. They gave no quarter, and we in turn could only throw a generation to slaughter in the darkness, forcing them back at unspeakable cost. Even the elves, a people apart in their island fortresses, consumed by their own arrogance and hatred of our blessed humanity may listen to reason, if given proper cause and enough force of opposition. But the tide that came forth from those depths was devoid of all sanity. Those few who returned never spoke of it, yet in every town, there is a drunken man or a sorrowing woman in a tavern, aged far beyond their years, missing an arm, or a leg, or a piece of their soul…
>
>

*Excerpt – 'The Great Incursion'.*

*~Reginald Makepeace, Milford Scholar.*

## San Ren

### Chapter 73

> A great many things got lost or damaged when the Perilous Realm and much of the western Savanah was devastated by the opening gambit of the Holy Empire’s attempt at realm change. They succeeded, this much is true, but at the cost of almost a third of the Imperial Commonwealth’s most verdant landmass – and saw the annihilation of their capital city of Lothringar and the entire ruling echelon therein as the initial price.
>
>
> A less expected price, however, that certainly featured not at all in the minds of those striking out from the south, was the breaking of the ancient treaty between the High and the Low Realms. For in the aftermath, as all eyes turned towards that land, many saw that things which *had* been there, and had fallen silent, were now, in fact, not, and realised that the promises made to them had been as worthless as those given to the peoples of Ur millennia before.
>
>
>
> In the war that came, the new Emperor would find that those gentle folk of tree and dale, of river and meadow were every bit as fearful in their means and methods as the stern folk of mountains and stormy skies, and that the creatures we called goblins, Ghoblan in the old tongue, held more secrets than legions of our youth and libraries of our spells could stem.
>
>

The Fall of the House of Everkind

  By San Ren, Chronicler of the Ten Wings Sect.

## Sanae Everkind

### Chapter 66

> In the catalogue of ‘superior’ ideas employed by those Dukes of the western provinces of our Imperial Commonwealth, the decision to hunt and kill one of the children of that most maligned, ill-served and misfortunate Daughter, Echidna – no less ‘Shussu Silver Tongue, Sovereign of the Devouring Sky’ – had always struck me as suspiciously responsible and uncommonly civic-minded In removing that deep-dwelling tyrant from its grim swamplands on the western edge of the great Savannah, they actually managed to make their domains a tiny bit more tolerable for the other inhabitants.
>
>
> At the time, it *was* thought somewhat suspicious that they actually succeeded in ‘killing’ a child of that terrible curse on early man. Now, almost 2000 years later and having seen that particular coin finally drop, I can only applaud in the most ironic sense the true ‘superiority’ of their plot.
>
>
>
> Rather than just kill it, which they *were* apparently unable to do, their decision to chain it up along with much of its brood in their mine, in an effort to forestall the ticking time bomb of malpractice and mendacious maleficence, leaves me without words. Truly, this is like seeing an empirical proof that morons can exist on a level as yet hitherto unseen. And as someone who saw *first-hand* what the early iterations of the ‘Escalating Monkey Cage’ were able to do, that is *really* saying something.
>
>

  Comments attributed to Empress Sanae Everkind shortly after Undergrove was reclaimed.

## Seng Mo, A Wandering Scholar/Elusive Scholar

### Chapter 1

> The Blue Gate School is one of the rising stars of the Yin Eclipse sub-continent. In the last 30,000 years it has risen from a minor faction in the coastal trading hub of Blue Water City to the pre-eminent sect within that north-eastern region of our Great World, acting as the gateway for much of the wealth of alchemical and medicinal craft emerging from there. Despite being quite low in the overall rankings of sects from the Eastern Continent, its leaders have largely shown excellent acumen when seeking out political allies to the south and it has some small connection to the Lu clan of the central continent and to the Ha clan. It is likely these connections which have enabled it to thrive when other influences, such as the ill-fated Lin School, were unable to survive the recent turmoil in the region…
>
>

Excerpt – The Sects of the East

### Chapter 7

> There are always many sides to a story, after all. That which is in the open, lauded for all to see; the accolade of the young heroes, their reputation ascendant in the flames of their trial. And that which was done in darkness, unsung and unknown, but from which the most profound seeds can bloom when eyes have moved on.
>
>
> Nowhere in recent times has this been more relevant than in the recollection of the darkest time that Yin Eclipse has witnessed in many a year – The Year of the Blood Eclipse.
>
>
> The origins of that dreadful cult have little to say for themselves. Bandits, looting ancient ruins in Blue Water Province under the patronage of the Iron Crown Duke, stumbled across an ancient evil from beyond the darkness of the aeonspan. The powerful played politics and those who could have forestalled it then chose instead to stand by, relishing in the misfortune of others.
>
>
> None of this, however, will be remembered. History will speak only of the terrible sacrifice, of those young heroes, the Imperial Court made on behalf of this land and of the great justice that came from across the sea. Peerless experts and young heroes who walked across the sky like living lightning to smite those villains with clear eyes and shining blades while all those whose words are held to matter by history looked on and applauded. Of the reputations made in the ruins for the Din, Lu and Ji clans.
>
>
> Nowhere will you see written that Yin Eclipse grasped them by the throat and dashed their heads against the rocks after they refused to respect it. That their unpreparedness allowed the cult to endure another half a year. That after the cult died, the rot of its deceptions lingered like a disease in the land, expediently buried by great powers with covetous eyes as they ruined its native children.
>
>
> That in the end the judgement that came was planted not amid those lofty heights, but in the earth where millions now lay dead, their towns and villages left in ruins. That it was watered with the grieving tears of mothers and daughters lamenting at the shrines. And that when it blossomed, it was born of grief and carried on the words of the simple folk who always endure.
>
>
>
> This truth haunts those who write history, for it is a story we cannot own, and for that, it will forever remain unsung.
>
>

Musings on the Blood Eclipse, from the collected writings of the Wandering Scholar.

### Chapter 9

> ‘In our world, we like to think all people have 'power'. The power to strive, to step forward, to challenge heaven, to better ourselves. It lifts us up, so the scholars say, from the mortal, the mundane, and the mediocre realities of lesser worlds. It is the means by which we attain, according to the great sages that speak to us of its intricacies, our path to the Heavens and the Dao.
>
>
> However, I can only refute the words of those scholars, my former peers, and rebuke the shallow interpretations of those great sages, among whose ranks I once aspired to sit. They were wrong. Their perspective lacking. Their ambition flawed. Their reason shallow.
>
>
> *Nowhere* can you see it more clearly than on [the subcontinent of] Yin Eclipse. Here, time and time again through the uncounted years, the wealth of its spirit herbs, the allure of its mysterious ruins, the majesty of its landscape and the strategic shield of its suppression have drawn the eyes of the world.
>
>
> Heroes, Families, Clans… Even Emperors have grasped its power. The desire for its riches has fuelled eras, made great sages and terrible villains alike and yet, in the end it was not they who shaped that power, but it that reshaped them, subverted them, judged them or eclipsed them entirely, leaving one cruel, immutable reality that has haunted these lands since eras immemorial.
>
>
>
> That power is not shaped by the moral nature of man. Rather; it is we who are shaped, morally, by the nature of power.’
>
>

Text by ‘Scholar Seng’, revelatory Arhat and spiritual, ancestral founder of the Seng School of Buddhism, believed by some to be Seng Mo. Originally translated by Reverend Zuise Wei Zhe of Sengyin Monastery

  ~Recompiled by Abbot Xin Ershang – post-destruction of Sengyin Monastery by experts from the Imperial School during the Year of the Blood Eclipse.

### Chapter 11

> …The Ha clan are a curious beast in the current generation: where other ancient noble clans almost exclusively focus their efforts upon securing their position from one generation to the next upon the grand stage of the central continent, the Ha clan has long divided its efforts in acquiring and controlling assets beyond these scepter’d shores. To many, this is seen as anathema of what the nobility of this world stands for.
>
>
> The nobility of the world are, by that view, the favoured sons and daughters of heaven. To seek to control mere towns and cities in those lesser lands is the act of the mercantile, and the common person… Such influences *should* be beholden to them, yes, but who would stoop to relying on such paltry and ephemeral influences and moneys to support their position directly? Such a thing would be a disgrace to their ancestors.
>
>
>
> However, another view can also be espoused: in taking this path, the Ha clan is largely without competition and has, through the millennia, quietly become the back channel by which many lesser influences seeking to rise into that highest rank find resources to set up their own footholds on the Imperial continent. Which is the correct path is hard to say but, in all my own dealings with the Ha clan, I have always found them to be circumspect and much more approachable than their peers… if with a certain edge.
>
>

Excerpt – The Great Clans of the Imperial Continent

### Chapter 24

> It is a truth that should be universally acknowledged, that where three or more awakened spirit herbs get together in a single valley, nothing good shall ever come of it.
>
>

~Saying, attributed to Seng Mo

### Old Chapter 24

> …It is perhaps fortuitous that both of the great trial zones of our world are somewhat separate from the continents on which they reside. The Pillars of the Dragon being on their own island peninsula south-east of Meng City, and the Gate of Death on the southern extremity of the Demon Wall. Only when some other target of a generation's interest, some great tomb or emergent treasure, occurs closer to home do we realise that rarely do such relics attract the best of our world. It is rare indeed that the emergence of such a place that does not result in a wave of chaos and bloodshed breaking upon the region misfortunate enough to birth it. At that time, all opportunities for those not blessed to stand at the apex of a generation might as well not exist. The list of lands ruined by the hunger of the generations to take what they can, because it is their ‘right’ as the chosen of the powers of the world is too long to recount here, but suffice to say that the list of exceptions has only ever numbered two.
> Yin Eclipse, 20,000 years ago – whence the crest of that generations wave broke and vanished without a trace, prompting a complete reset of the generational calendar millennia before it should, and the events at the start of the 2nd Dun Dynasty, when the Demon Emperor intervened beyond the Demon Wall and in the process destroyed what remaining face existed for the last Shan Emperor.
>
>

*Excerpt – Miracle and Mayhem: on the Treasure Lands of Eastern Azure Great World.*

*By Seng Mo.*

### Old Chapter 25

> …When scholars think more widely of the sources of trouble that beset our world, they tend to think about the terrible beast tides of the Western Continent, the Demons beyond the Demon Wall, or the periodic upheavals that beset the Argent Devouring Caves in the south. If asked to think bigger, or less abstractly, they might well point you to the rivalry over great office of the Kong clan, the Heavenly Solace Society and the Azure Astral Authority Alliance that plays out through much of the Azure Astral Region.
>
>
> However if you went to any random town or city on any continent and asked the working Daoist on the street, or the Buddhist supplicant, or just a common tradesman or craftswoman and talked about that list they would just look at you weirdly and tell you to stop talking about things inconsequential to the moment. For the lay person, the most common and indeed frustrating and impactful source of trouble, is in fact usually their local school, sect, sept or cult. It is not the beast tide, or the extradimensional incursion that is likely to ruin their town, but youths from a different region, arguing about how amazing their seniors are in the tea house, or cheating the craftswoman trying to ply her trade, stealing some local treasure of good fortune that has been of benefit for millennia and so left undisturbed, or just coming to cause a ruckus because their Senior Brother's nephew had a crush on some Young Lady and her Junior Sister’s Auntie didn’t like it.
>
>
>
> Truly, most disruption to the common way of life and good health comes from these conflicts. For these scions are told from a young age that they are all special, and given access to all the trappings of power to progress rapidly in power while rarely being taught any form of social responsibility and invariably being sheltered from the real consequences of their actions by the shadow of their seniors, and if that fails their teachers or a school's elders. Far too many a quiet and humble community has been ruined by direct or indirect means from a misfortunate youth contesting with such a scion's crude action, or a pure young daughter catching the eye of a passing inner disciple of this or that school…
>
>

*Excerpt from a pamphlet speaking out on the unaccountable nature of schools and sects.*

*~by Seng Mo. Wandering Scholar*

### Chapter 65

> For most folk on the Central Continent, spirit food is a thing of grand restaurants and prodigious expense and pageantry – what is sold by vendors in city markets or made by the common folk would be considered qi-rich food, but most would agree is not ‘spirit food’ which holds a certain connotation. As such, when you think of all the benefits that the Hunter Pavilions bring to Blue Water Province, perhaps the most underappreciated by those who visit it is the quiet renaissance in traditional means of cooking spirit food that is by and large accessible to the masses. Certainly, of the top ten restaurants and tea houses renowned for their spirit food in Blue Water City and Yun Shan City, eight are run by retired members of the Hunter Bureau and all employ or hold dedicated contracts through the pavilions for their resources, yet it is not here that you will find the most exquisite foods but instead by the roadways through little villages or in the market plazas of the inland towns. Here, it is seldom the grand thing of the other continents, and most who come from outside just dismiss it as qi-rich food, much to their detriment, for there is a different sort of harmony to be found in its rustic means and its simple preparation…
>
>

Excerpt from ‘Wandering through Seven Continents’

  By Seng Mo, Wandering Chronicler

### Chapter 79

> The death of an era is never an easy thing and few died in a more decrepit and ugly way than the previous Imperial Dynasty. For centuries noble powers had agitated against it and its young emperor, gnawing away at his mandate for both good and ill. It is certainly undeniable that the Moon Tomb Emperor, scion of the Shan clan and a genius blessed with the blood of dragons, was a hard Emperor to love. His rages, his compulsions and his unwillingness to compromise on even the smallest of things made him a figure that our *enemies* feared…
>
>
> However, an Emperor cannot rule on external fear alone and while in his short reign, barely five centuries all told, he had great success in sending the enemies of the Imperial Shan scattering, at home he only engendered fear in those who supported him and greed in those both near and far, who saw an opportunity to strike at the weak underbelly of the imperial seat and seize it for themselves, and perhaps gain the inheritance of a dragon in the process.
>
>
> The final straw in all of this was his treatment of his young Empress, Saintess White Swan, a talented prodigy from the Sheng Heavenly clan and grandniece of the Emperor of Shan Lai. For though she was a great beauty and much beloved, the Emperor, who adored her for her beauty and had long desired her, also came to despise her in equal measure after her elevation to sit by his side. For his blood drove him to envy what she had, and which he did not – the love of the people.
>
>
> Subsequently, with their falling out in a very public and embarrassing denunciation, the favour of Shan Lai was briefly withdrawn from the Imperial Seat and shortly thereafter the young Emperor entered ‘seclusion’ to attack his advancement and was mandated to appoint an heir from among the noble clans of his court. To oversee this task three figures were appointed: Mu Shansu, the renowned hero of many eras; Din Hao, the Imperial Chancellor, and Tai Weimin who had returned to the world of his birth and risen to great acclaim in the eyes of the people.
>
>
>
> Thus was set in motion what can only be called ‘a judgement of heaven upon those with ill designs’ the aftermath of which we are still grappling with, half an era later.
>
>

Excerpt from The Annals of Shan

  By Seng Mo – Elusive Scholar.

### Chapter 80

> Previously I wrote on the sorry events surrounding the aftermath of the loss of favour of the last Emperor of Shan; however, this was by no means the *only* catalyst for the chaos that would come.
>
>
> For many thousands of years, up to this point other influences had renewed interested in our Eastern Azure Great World. In part, this was due to the previous emperor’s sons, those who did not ascend to the throne, making friends widely among their peers when they departed the world for other pastures. It was also, in no small part, due to the recent collapse of another great hegemony – the Ten Songs Celestial Starfield.
>
>
>
> A titan of that era and several prior, it had long been embroiled in matters beyond the borders of the vast region of the supreme cosmos the sages call the ‘Martial Axial Region’. Now, though, those wars came home to our Martial Axial Region, and there was a great invasion from beyond our borders. One of the *old enemies* made a great expedition and the influences of the Grand Dukes of Heaven, the Duke of Shu, the Duke of Kong and the Duke of Teng, along with the Queen Mothers of the South and West sent forth their own to do war alongside the powers of the Ten Songs, summoning a multitude of heroes from ten thousand worlds, including our own Azure Astral.
>
>

Excerpt from the Annals of Shan

  By Seng Mo – Elusive Scholar.

### Chapter 81

> From our own world, the greater strength of the Shu and the Meng also sent forth their greatest peers, including two of the most dazzling stars of that era – Ancestor Iron of the Shu Pavilion, who had newly ascended; Imperial Ancestor Fu, Paragon of two eras called together what remained of the Seven Sovereign Ancestors and set forth as well; and finally, the Old Ghost of Hao, whose own grandmother had stood at the side of the Divine Sage Teng when he ascended beyond heaven in the first era of our world, exited his seclusion, having successfully crossed Dao Ascension and also set forth at their side.
>
>
> Before they left, these three, all imperial advisors held conference on the state of the world, concerned by the short reign of the Moon Tomb Emperor and the instability it had caused. In the end, they pushed for two neutral parties of high esteem, Mu Shansu and Tai Weimin to support White Swan Dowager Empress to select her husband’s successor.
>
>
>
> Their deeds in that war would echo across an aeon-span, and yet, what transpired upon their departure would leave only the taste of ashes upon their return. Hao turned from the world and went back to war, disgusted with his descendants and Ancestors Shu and Meng found their hands irreparably weakened by the faith they had placed in their scions that remained, such as their influence was fractured in the eyes of the world.
>
>

Excerpt from the Annals of Shan

  By Seng Mo – Elusive Scholar.

## Dao Sovereign Sheng Wen

### Old Chapter 16

> …It is oft remarked that if you are without particular talent in Spiritual Cultivation, have not the heart for Dharma, or Bodily Cultivation, not the nature for Soul Cultivation, nor the teacher for the Martial Forms, there still remains Physical Cultivation. So long as one has the means to acquire a mantra, one can attain quite easily a degree of strength that would be impressive in a mortal world.
>
>
> While it is true that one can gain strength, durability, and in fact an almost cockroach-like survivability compared to a spiritual cultivator of that realm. That one can live for a millennia and ensure that your descendants live double or even triple their normal mortal spans. It is in the end, an inescapable truth that this is sadly not a mortal world, and we are not mortals dreaming of Tian.
>
>
>
> To us Immortality is not the end of the path, but the beginning. As such, Physical Cultivation has no road here. None that I know of have ever taken it beyond its equivalent of Spirit Severing. Most never make it past Mantra Seed, its equivalent to forming a Golden Core. Additionally, those who dual cultivate these mantras with other methods such as Spiritual Laws cannot take the spiritual part as the major component. To do so invariably invokes issues in tribulations that not even the most remarkable of sages have ever managed to raise a disciple to overcome. As such your spiritual cultivation will never advance beyond your physical one, cursing you to a broken road for the compromise of a swift start…
>
>

*~Excerpt from a talk on the Heavenly Dao.*

*Dao Sovereign Sheng Wen.*

## Scholar Shuhang

### Chapter 24

> There is a custom, among the Yin People that wearing charms of jasmine or mulberry evokes good fortune for the wearer and will ease their passage through daily life.
>
>

  ~Observation, on the customs of the Yin Peoples, by Scholar Shuhang.

## Shu Tian

### Old Chapter 20

> ...The mystery of those ill-fated expeditions has long left a sour note on the history of our Western Continent. The rapid demise of the Heavenly Dawn Sect in particular following its unfortunate decapitation during those events was hailed as a great tragedy, and at the time, the loss of so many great figures who stood at the top of that era made all fear for the security of the Heavenly Dynasty and its Young Emperor. At the time few remarked on this change, for the Emperor was very much the man of the hour., But now, devoid of the veil of tragedy and fear for tomorrow that that time was shrouded in, and afforded the hindsight to see how this has all played out, this whole episode does seem to have been highly convenient for recently ascendant Emperor Azure Tyrant. Certainly in regards to the rapid dismissal of so many of those influences in the years that followed and the equally rampant consolidation of the Dun and Din Clans at the heart of the Imperial Court at the expense of so much tragedy.
>
>

*~from the personal writings of Shu Tian, 3rd Generation Sect Master of the Shu Pavilion.*

### Chapter 64

> It is easy to forget sometimes, when you have one oppressor close to home, that the villain of times gone by was not quite the paragon of fairer prospect you recall it to be. As sages of morality and more learned histories should serve to remind us, just because the banners changed and there is a new throne doesn’t mean the old regime was suddenly less horrible, or that the new one is likely to be much better. This is doubly true when they are both still fighting like rats in a sack over who gets to be king of the rats, and who gets to own the sack like these are two different questions.
>
>

  -From the personal writings of Shu Tian, 3rd Gen. Headmaster of the Shu Pavilion

## Immortal Valiant Lion

### Chapter 18

> When we arrived in that place, it was as easy as stepping through the doorway to this room. However, once inside it was hard to say what was real and what was false, for the rules made a mockery of everything we understood of the world around us and death had no consideration for mighty or meek. To leave was more fraught than seizing good fortune from the heavens themselves... and all we got for the experience was a bunch of stone jars and a grade eight herb.
>
>

*Excerpt from an ancient written account of an anomaly in the Inner Valleys to the Hunter Bureau.*

*~By Immortal Valiant Lion*

## Wen Beixong

### Chapter 88

> The third campaign of the Huang-Mo wars has in many ways become the singular event that nobody likes to talk about. A cynical observer would suggest that this is because those powers thrive on grand gestures and great events and great *humiliation* is neither of those. Like all such things though, the truth is a little more nuanced.
>
>
> The Huang clan had been aware for a while that the momentum of the conflict had somewhat exceeded their control. There were already doubts among the clan’s upper echelons regarding that most esoteric of alchemy by which great powers operate – the number of bodies in coffins versus the reputation of the clan as a whole – by the close of the first campaign.
>
>
> The Wuli branch and Fei branches were mostly content to see the matter as settled after the duel between Mo Zhao and Guo Wuli. However, the Gan, Hong and Shi branches all, for various reasons saw this as an opportunity to push for greater victories – either because they were dissatisfied at the prominence of Guo Wuli in those matters, or because they wanted to stir up sentiment in their own territories, using the war to push for greater victories elsewhere.
>
>
> It took a great amount of pressure to divorce the disastrous fallout of what happened above Kang’s Origin, from the ‘second campaign’ itself, in the eyes of most. The curse put upon half a star field by the God Slaughtering Hall for the shaming of their Saintess was dropped thoroughly in the lap of the Huang clan. This was exacerbated when it became clear that the *only* way that the curse could be lifted was for those ‘afflicted’ to bow nine times before each of the hundred maidens of the Mo clan and acknowledge their crime with true repentance in their hearts.
>
>
> As such, the Huang clan’s uppermost echelons within the court of the Wise Emperor of Huang largely washed their hands of the matter and told their ‘juniors’ to resolve it promptly, or new ‘Elders’ could be found, who had better eyesight.
>
>
>
> Thus, was the Third ‘campaign’ christened ‘Ten Thousand Eyes of Blood’, and a great many people both high and low learned that the heavens contained terrors such as they had never conceived as they were faced with a cruel choice – cast aside all reputation and bow to the Mo clan, whom they held to be mendacious villains, or be known forevermore as an influence that offended God Slaughtering Hall. The Gan and Hong branches’ influence was lessened markedly for the next several thousand years, blamed as they were for the loss of reputation for not knowing when to quit in the eyes of the Wise Emperor’s Advisors.
>
>

-Excerpt from ‘Annals of Three Wars’

By Wen Beixong

### Chapter 89

> The third ‘campaign’, the so-called ‘Ten Thousand Eyes of Blood’, caused massive ructions throughout the territories of the Huang, Kong and Sheng. While the Mo clan’s apparent willingness to take money over face at nearly every turn in the aftermath caught many off guard, it allowed the Huang clan the opportunity to claim a sort of awkward victory in the eyes of their more ardent supporters.
>
>
> They also touted widely that they would have won, had God Slaughtering Hall not ‘interfered’, in contravention with many formally established agreements in the matters of the Heavenly clans, and that the Mo had effectively been forced to hide in its shadow through their thoroughly fortuitous, in the eyes of many, links to a Saintess of the hall.
>
>
> That the Mo clan were happy to just shrug and still show up demanding reparations, ‘hiding’ behind that strength, did nothing to help these perceptions. Many of those powers effectively doubled down, arguing, even as they paid over huge sums, that it was all because of God Slaughtering Hall and that this was bullying by sideways means.
>
>
> The final straw, really, was the vast, overinflated sums that various powers and the Huang clan had to pay to ransom back the eight juniors who had been captured by Mo Xiao, simply to avoid the ignominy of the Mo clan parading them widely in their own territory.
>
>
>
> As such, when the five great powers set up the ‘Young Sovereign’ competition, as much as a way to stimulate morale, while they did reach out to the cardinal courts, such was the ill sentiment among many regarding God Slaughtering Hall, and so widely had the outcome of the war been complained over, that there was little serious engagement with them, and as a result the other three, Turquoise Pond, North Star Grotto and Vast Obscurity Grove, were, if not disrespectfully disregarded, perhaps not given the due concern that they might otherwise have expected. This would, when the Heavenly Hundred was later set up, become a source of *many* bitter regrets.
>
>

-Excerpt from ‘Annals of Three Wars’

  By Wen Beixong

## Xue Kai Lan

### Chapter 23

> “If I ever lay eyes on Di Ji again, I will make sure his fate is such that he cannot dream of peace though he lives through ten thousand lifetimes! And you… ‘Brave’ Paragons of the ‘Blue Morality’, hiding behind the skirts of the Divine Kong! You who protect him this day from the justice of My Heavens. Do not think you will escape. Even if I have to stalk your ten generations I will see everything you have ever built brought to ruin in this world.”
>
>

  ~Lady Kai, to the assembled Heroes of the Imperial Court.

## Scholar Yung

### The Mysterious Beggar's Auction

> —One such scroll that has seen some minor infamy in our own esteemed influence is the so-called 'Wizzard's Cursed Scroll'. This artefact, of which a few were recovered at the time, and several since have shown up at certain auctions, can be classified broadly as a 'utility' talisman, that is rechargeable. In the aid of prospective researchers identifying 'genuine' examples, I will provide a description below, focused on the key, 'unique' points of these scrolls.
>
>
> Genuine examples all appear to have been 'written' on the reverse side of a substantial plan of an unnamed, and perhaps forgotten plan of a sewer for a city only identified by the last five letters of its name—shada [See included illustration for notable features to look for]. This no doubt also accounts for the vaguely inauspicious divination readings you may get when trying to use compasses around them.
>
>
> Attempting to open a 'genuine' copy without using it, will immediately cause the scroll to yell *'Yer a Wizzard—'*, hence common identifier, accompanied by the openers name. In an interesting quirk, discussed at length in Appendix 1-A: Unforeseen Side Effects, the 'declaration' of the openers name will be their true name, irrespective of what disguises or common perceptions might beguile it at that time.
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> Deliberate use of the scroll *on* a person, object or other target, will *always* spawn a spherical, one-foot diameter orb of law-infused fire, that unerringly targets the most inconveniently valuable, then valuable combustible, then explosively combustible object within a 100-foot radius. This effect has led us to suspect some association with—Choob’s *Lesser* Explosion, discussed later in this text.
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> If no such object is available, the orb will *usually* hit the target, but its effects are generally lessened, and eighty-seven times out of one hundred tests I recorded, saw it hit the caster as well. Ten times, it just spun in place for a few minutes, before vanishing and in three times it followed the caster for a full day, before *eventually* finding a target of worst opportunity, while its strength was increased several fold.
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> Attempts to manipulate a genuine scroll beyond this point, will always be met with exclamations like *'Weak!'* and *'What are you, a Sorcerer?'* or *'Hah! Stupid warlock—'* accompanied by the sound of derisive laughter.
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> If *successfully* cast, the user will gain a spectral pointy hat for the next forty-eight hours. Occasionally a fake beard or a robe with badly embroidered stars were awarded.
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~Excerpt from ‘On the Ten Mysterious Cursed Scrolls' — by Scholar Yung of [information redacted]