Jia Ai Hou

**Jia Ai Hou** was High Exarch of The High Church of Messiah-as-Emperox during the years **2901 - 2912**

She is mostly known for her actions which would result in the Phantom Council being formed in 2934, by not only giving The Siblings of the Seventh their mission but also funding them and giving them the authority to act independently of the High Exarchs during the Second Imperial Civil War.

## History

Ascending to the position of High Exarch at the start of the Blood Eagle’s reign, Jia Ai Hou’s primary task would be to mend the schisms still present in the Empire, and in particular that between the High Church and the Imperial House. This she would do by almost blindly supporting the Blood Eagle and ignoring the early warning signs of tyranny, thinking the harsh treatment necessary to maintain a long-lasting peace in the wake of a massive civil war.

When the Council of Houses was formed and began their shadow war, which would blossom into the Second Imperial Civil War, Ai Hou dismissed them as short-minded greedy fools only opposing the Blood Eagle to claim the Imperial Throne themselves. As the unrest grew and the Aquilan-Cah Binn Conflict was turning out to be a giant waste of life, however, despite High Church theology mandating that the Empress could do nothing wrong she began to doubt whether she was right to back the Blood Eagle. Seeing Conséc turn increasingly draconian in suppressing noble opposition she began to fear that similar measures would soon start being implemented against the High Church itself to make it fully subservient.

Unsure of the loyalties of those around her, in 2906 Ai Hou gathered the leaders of the secretive Siblings of the Seventh for a clandestine meeting within a small, insignificant chamber in the Grand Temple. There she grilled them until she was reassured of their continued loyalty to the High Exarch above all else. Believing a full-blown civil war inevitable, she tasked them with ensuring the High Church would survive it. They were to carefully assess the state of the conflict while assessing to what degree different High Church members were loyal to either the High Church, the Blood Eagle, or the Council of Houses. This was to be done so that they could effectively and secretly seize power and steer the High Church onto the proper path which would allow it to emerge on the side of the victors and be allowed its autonomy. Finally, fearing undue influence, the Siblings were given the authority to ignore commands from the Council of Exarchs, placing them under her sole control.

Though Ai Hou, for the most part, served the Blood Eagle faithfully during the next few years, in 2912 the Blood Eagle became convinced that seditious nobles must have infiltrated the High Church. Determined to stamp this treachery out, she demanded that her High Exarch empower the Inquisition, grant it new authority to scrutinise the “spiritual wellbeing” of nobles, and have its conduct subject to Imperial scrutiny. Resenting such an obvious attack on noble privileges and fearing that an empowered Inquisition would betray both the Siblings and herself, she tried to delay its implementation for as long as possible.

Knowing that her days as High Exarch were numbered, Ai Hou skillfully began to diverge massive amounts of funds to the Siblings so that they could expand their numbers and operations to be able to oppose the Inquisition. This sapping of funds, though its destination remained unknown, was however soon found out by the Reformist Exarch who informed the Blood Eagle of Ai Hou’s betrayal. As her final desperate act before being dismissed and sent to Gleipnir in 2915 along with her closest allies in the Council of Exarchs, she gave the Siblings unparallel authority to act independently and in complete defiance of the new High Exarch, all in pursuit of their goal of saving the High Church from the ruinous civil war.