Forge of Destiny Nov Bonus -Dynasties of the Emerald Seas

Bonus Chapter-Dynasties of the Erald Seas

Of all the provinces of the glorious and everlasting Celestial Empire, Erald Seas is perhaps the most troubled. The realm of woodlands has not suffered the great cataclysm of the Golden Fields, or the constant warfare of the Savage Seas, of course, but its troubles are more persistent. To discuss this matter, it is necessary to return to the beginning, to the still-savage days before the Empire’s founding. The Erald Seas then was not really a proper kingdom.

Tsu the Diviner was a wise and mighty sage, this is true, codifying the patterns of weather and season, allowing for the first recorded instances of sustained agriculture, but he was ultimately a man of his ti. He had no interest in developing a strong and stable society and state. His people remained dispersed and decentralized through the vast woodlands of the province. The nature of their pacts and agreents with spirits lead them to avoid the building of any great infrastructure, relying upon natural formations, such as the divine tree of Xiangn. When the Diviner passed, his children were content to live stagnant lives, performing the rituals of their ancestors without innovation and living lives heavily influenced by spirits. It was during this period that the tribes of the Erald Seas received the na ‘Weilu’ from their neighbors, after their height and the prominent horns that they inherited from their spirit ancestors.

There was so change to this paradigm in the millennia leading up to the ergence of the Sage Emperor. Contact, both violent and otherwise, from the growing realms of the Bai and Zheng clans spurred developnt among the Weilu. So among them began to build cities of stone and expand their fields beyond the simple affairs laid down by their illustrious ancestor. This resulted in an internal schism among the Weilu, which ca to a head with the death of the current patriarch, whose sons were mbers of the opposing factions.

The exact details of the matter are murky; in the aftermath, the Weilu descended further into isolation and xenophobia, and the cities that had been built were cast down and reseeded. The conflict had greatly damaged them and so, when the Sage Emperor ca, with the Bai and the Zheng at his back, the Weilu simply surrendered after brief conflict in return for a promise of autonomy, sending forth hostages from their most prominent families to ensure good behavior.

In the aftermath, the Weilu began to fragnt further. The ‘pure’ bloodlines maintained the Weilu na, but as their branches spread and flourished, mingling with the hill peoples of what is now the southern reaches of the province, new nas began to erge. These new clans remained loyal to the overall tribal confederacy, if only tacitly. However, the pure clans were by this ti dabbling more and more in the realm of spirits and growing ever more disconnected from their vassals, and without a firm hand to guide them, of course their people fell to squabbling.

What ca next is yet another frustrating gap in historical knowledge. During the Strife of the Twin Emperors, the pure Weilu clans simply vanished amid the flas of the conflict. There were no records of violence, and what few contemporary records survived the zeal of the false Emperor Shang only indicate that their vassal tribes discovered their dream palaces empty and already fading one after another. More material redoubts took longer to penetrate, and it seems that there were a bare handful of Weilu still about, but their fate seems to have been a violent one.

In the wake of this disappearance, the Erald Seas fell into civil strife, even as the rest of the empire was drawing its own period of instability to a close. The Erald Seas civil wars were indecisive and bloody affairs, but without the Weilu and with the decay of their spirit pacts, superior thods of imperial organization and building finally began to take root: first in the form of fortresses and roads, and then in growing towns and cities. One century after the strife of the Twin Emperors ended and the last holdouts of the usurpers were exterminated, Emperor Yu of the second dynasty finally interceded, throwing support behind the Xi clan, raising them over their rivals the Hui, Gong, and ng.

While this did quell the majority of open warfare, and spare the beleaguered people of the Erald Seas further strife, the rule of the Xi was always sowhat weak. They did not hold true supremacy over their vassals, depending on imperial patronage. The Xi were a savage clan, and did poorly at the task of building the cohesion of their province. Aside from imperial patronage, they maintained their supremacy through the conquest of the barbaric hill people of the south, whose blood had mingled with the Weilu’s to form the successor clans.

These campaigns served to spread Xi influence by parceling out land to favored supporters and seeding branch clans to support them, in addition to simply co-opting a number of hill tribes who surrendered or joined with the Imperial dukes to assault their rivals. However, Xi diplomacy was always a lacking affair, and so these bonds swiftly deteriorated and new clans and subjugated tribes began to line up with other factions.

It was the aftermath of the Awakening of the Purifying Sun which finished them. Many of the mightiest Xi warriors had answered the Imperial muster and died in the cataclysm, and their numbers had never recovered. With the imperial seat reeling from these troubles the assassination of the Xi Patriarch marked the end of the clan. The Xi were hunted and exterminated to the last warrior, and those who remained were absorbed into other clans.

The following conflict was bloody indeed, but this ti a proper victor erged. The Hui clan rose to dominate their rivals through asures of great cunning. Many were the plays written of the masterful subterfuge by which the Matriarch Hui and her sons played their rivals against each other, allowing them to destroy themselves and rise to the top over their feuding bones.

It was a policy which they continued as dukes; the courts of the Hui were said to be the most treacherous in the Empire, drawing disdain even from the Bai, who often receive similar recriminations from outsiders. In the wake of the cataclysm and the decline of the second dynasty, there was no will among the imperial court to replace them.

Over ti, the Hui grew decadent indeed, ensconcing themselves within the divine tree of Xiangn and rarely venturing out, forcing their vassals to co to them to pay obeisance. However, by the ti that Hui decadence had reached its peak, the chaos they had wrought with their spies and silver tongues was self-sustaining: tos full of blood oaths and grudges existed between the clans of Erald Seas.

As such, when the Barbarians of the Wall united under the Great Khan Ogodei, the clans were swept aside one by one. It was only the heroism of southern survivors, united with the forces of the ng, Luo, and Diao clans, aided by then Prince An, which saw the Khan off. In the centuries that followed, resentnt boiled toward the Hui who had not sent a single warrior to contest the barbarian who had ravaged half of their province. To add insult to injury, beyond the land seized in punishnt by the emperor to seed the Great Sects, the Hui maintained their claims upon all the southern lands of exterminated clans, refusing to redistribute it.

Thus, raids in the south remained a terrible problem, and even the valor of the Great Sects could not wholly stem the tide. Many other small clans who had survived Ogodei, many heroes of the resistance or their children, began to die, and anger continued to grow.

It was at this ti that the remarkable Cai Shenhua erged. A second generation cultivator, born from a man who had risen to nobility through the Sect system, through so ans, she achieved the peak of cultivation at the incredible age of fifty, and rose to challenge the Hui. As a cultivator of the Eighth Realm, she proved impossible to confront or eliminate for the ailing ducal clan. The Hui could do little save raise chaos in her ranks as she gathered support, and their complaints to the Imperial Court fell upon deaf ears, for the now-Emperor An regarded the Hui with contempt, having fought alongside the resistance forces in the south.

When the Hui were at last isolated in Xiangn, and the Emperor released a decree, naming Cai Shenhua as Duchess of Erald Seas, they could only die.

It remains to be seen what the new Duchess will do with the province, if she will at last be the one to break the fractious nature of Erald Seas, but if so, it shall be a long and arduous journey.

Writing of an Alabaster Sands scholar, on the political situation in the Erald Seas.