The Celestial Bureaucracy
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SamSniped
DJ Goodboye
Did...did LeLouch just return to the forums?
Daedwartin
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SamSniped
DJ Goodboye
...the apocalypse is near! 
Tomorrow's Dawn
Heroes Never Die
The Aswang
From the journal of Tiger Vanguard Maj. Kirisaki Hideki
Day 15:
After a little over two weeks of heavy fighting across the water,
we’ve managed to wrest control of Guimaras away from the Kampucheans.
We lost a number of good, able-bodied men just storming the beach.
I am not pleased with the results, as we are under half fighting strength already, with the next convoy arriving in two weeks.
At the next officers’ meeting when I receive correspondence from the rest of the Army in the Philippines, I am certainly going make my voice heard.
This island-hopping strategy can only bring ruin to us in the long term, and we need a more psychological, rather than a physical method, to bring the Kampuchean remnants to heel.
The rest of the day was dedicated to opening up communications with the local Filipinos,
who, while liberated from their old Kampuchean masters, were leery of us as a replacement.
I believe it is imperative that we try to begin relations on the correct footing.
Also, one of my squadrons chanced upon a curious find.
While they were freeing some of the POWs in the Kampucheans’ holding facility, they found a native man being held in solitary confinement there.
Upon releasing him, the man attacked them, forcing them to subdue the individual and return him into confinement.
The oddest thing from their report, as I have read, is that the man appears to be pregnant, as odd as that sounds.
The locals had a strong aversion to the building to begin with, but when asked to identify the prisoner, no local would comply with our request, citing malevolent vibes emanating from that particular cell.
Fernando Guiterrez, the village elder, approached me and recommended that we execute the prisoner as soon as possible.
When I asked him, ‘Isn’t that man one of your own? Don’t you want him back after the Kampucheans imprisoned him?’,
he shook his head and replied, “No, he is not one of ours. And you would do well not to make him yours as well.”
Day 16:
I spoke with the civilian researcher Mr. Cao, today. He shared something interesting with me.
He noted that these natives strangely enough, shared the same kinds of names as people from Iberia did.
That’s halfway across the world! How could that be possible?
Quite a few of the natives had recognizably Han surnames as well, despite there never being any recorded interaction between the Empire and the Philippines before the war with the Kampucheans.
Two families even possessed Yamato surnames.
Perhaps the Filipinos were the result of ancient shipwrecked sailors? Maybe during the War of the Empresses?
That doesn’t explain the prevalence of Iberian surnames though.
Later in the day, I spoke to my colleague, Major Wu about the prisoner and what the village elder recommended we do with him.
Major Wu disagreed. He thought it would be a better idea to keep him alive and interrogate him.
Day 17:
Major Wu and I had entered the cell to interrogate the unusual native man.
At first, the subject was compliant with our demands and answered our questions without too much hassle.
But when we started to press about where he came from, he showed signs of agitation and refused to communicate.
The Major wasn’t having any of it and smacked the prisoner across the face, to which the prisoner whipped back from his chair and spat on his face.
I was about ready to retaliate in kind when I noticed the Major was reeling and covering his face.
Upon close inspection, the spit was black and viscous, and unlike any human secretion I had ever seen.
It appeared to be causing the Major great pain, so I quickly dragged him out and cut the interrogation short as Major Wu required immediate medical attention.
Day 18:
Our physician determined that there was nothing discernibly wrong with the Major.
He requested a sample of the viscous fluid that had struck Major Wu but it had long been cleaned off and the prisoner would not produce any more samples.
Major Wu ordered for the prisoner to be executed. We dragged him out of the cell and brought him to the village square,
as Mr. Guiterrez requested we do so in the event of the execution and chopped off the prisoner’s head as he shouted curses at us.
His blood was thick and black. Highly abnormal.
As soon as our soldiers leapt off the stage, the Filipinos began burning the execution platform.
I didn’t want to write this as I’m not one to give much stock in such nonsense but…
I couldn’t help but feel that the air in the village became much lighter when the prisoner died.
Day 19:
What’s Wu’s problem?
He called my patrol route drafts “sloppy” and “boneheaded” without giving me any reasoning.
We almost got into a fight until I decided to be the better man and walked out of the tent.
Later that day, I saw him spit in my tea! I subsequently threw it out.
I don’t have the authority to discipline him but the higher-ranking officers
will be sure to hear this from me in a few weeks time.
Day 20:
I didn’t believe it when I saw it.
Major Wu flew. He flew.
Let me start from the beginning.
I was awoken by some of my men, who notified me of some kind of disturbance near Major Wu’s quarters.
When I arrived on the scene with several of the men, he was flinging furniture across the hut and smashing pottery everywhere.
I was about to try to calm him down when he jumped out the window and down the hill below.
He glided down like some kind of bird or bat, descending upon a dozing private and carrying him off into the jungle.
With great haste, we seized some torches and gave chase after the airborne Major.
When we found him, his topknot was undone, long, unkempt black hair draping his back like seaweed.
The Major was on all fours, feasting on the entrails of the private he had carried off.
I still retch when I think back on that single horrifying moment when I saw him turn his head
towards us and dribble a sickening foam of saliva and human fat from the corners of his mouth.
I panicked and gave the order to fire. The men shot him down mid-flight before he could get away.
When we checked his body, he was riddled with crossbow bolts and heavily bleeding but somehow still alive.
Soon, the villagers arrived on the scene and Mr. Guiterrez pleaded with me to quickly restrain the Major if I wished to save him yet.
After what I saw him do, I agreed it was the best course of action and had my men restrain the Major
with heavy rope and drag him into the old Kampuchean prison where the pregnant man used to reside.
I met with the village elder in his home that same night to discuss what must be done and what Major Wu had become.
Mr. Guiterrez told me that he had become an aswang. A flesh eater with inhuman powers harboring nothing but contempt and malice for humans.
The condition, as I’m told by the elder, is transmitted through contact with saliva.
I asked him about his earlier comment that there was still time yet to save the Major.
He told me there was a narrow window but that he needed a day to prepare some kind of cleansing ceremony.
I readily agreed; after that experience, I could believe anything. We continued to converse well into the dawn.
Before I retired in the morning, I couldn’t help but remember the stories of Yōkai my great-grandfather used to tell me as a child.
Were they true too? I don’t want to think about it.
Day 22:
The night watch told me that he had been thrashing and trying to break free of his restraints all night.
Seeing that he wouldn’t go easy, we beat him over the head until he lost consciousness and dragged him over to the elder’s home where he had set up the cleansing site.
He instructed us to hang the Major upside-down by his feet while some of his followers pushed a cauldron in place underneath.
Mr. Guiterrez explained that spinning the aswang round and round would expel the source of the corruption; a black chick, as odd as that sounded.
We were to spin him continuously until the chick was ejected from his mouth, and into the boiling cauldron.
Knowing the Major didn’t have much time left, the men set to work immediately on spinning him.
Major Wu regained consciousness a few minutes after the water in the cauldron began boiling.
He- or at least his unhinged state of mind must have realized what was happening because
he started to emit the most inhuman sounding shriek I had ever heard.
The soldiers stopped spinning him momentarily, reeling from this disruption, but I commanded them to hold fast and keep spinning him.
True to the village elder’s word, a black chick spilled out of Major Wu’s mouth!
A collective scream emerged from the mouths of the natives as it bounced off the rim of the cauldron and made a mad dash for the door.
I chased it down and was able to crush it under my heel before it could escape, to the relief of the villagers.
They set my boot on fire too, just to make certain.
Day 23:
I’m told that Major Wu will make a recovery in a few days time. He’s been resting for days since the ceremony.
On the question of his status, he did kill and cannibalize a young private, but was not in his correct state of mind when he did so, making this a very difficult decision.
The men feel uneasy around him but I don’t want to execute a good fellow officer who is… in such a complicated evaluatory situation.
I’ll have to give it much more thought.
[THIS BOOK HAS BEEN CONFISCATED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF INQUIRIES FOR REVIEW]
Agent Xiangshe reporting,
The author of this journal as well as all persons present on the island of Guimaras at the time of these events have had their memories wiped.
An awareness breach has been averted. I was not able to find an opportunity to safely assess
or neutralize the aswang threat with my ichor gift as the mortals were in frequent motion at all times in the day.
The Imperial soldiers and the Filipinos were able to contain the crisis themselves however, as evidenced from the journal.
I have also found a potential generator on this particular island. Requesting a second dispatch to Guimaras to assist in verification.
Until then, I will continue my anthropological research in my mortal guise until further notice.
Glory to Nü Wa.
Agent Xiangshe, over and out.
From the journal of Tiger Vanguard Maj. Kirisaki Hideki
Day 15:
After a little over two weeks of heavy fighting across the water,
we’ve managed to wrest control of Guimaras away from the Kampucheans.
We lost a number of good, able-bodied men just storming the beach.
I am not pleased with the results, as we are under half fighting strength already, with the next convoy arriving in two weeks.
At the next officers’ meeting when I receive correspondence from the rest of the Army in the Philippines, I am certainly going make my voice heard.
This island-hopping strategy can only bring ruin to us in the long term, and we need a more psychological, rather than a physical method, to bring the Kampuchean remnants to heel.
The rest of the day was dedicated to opening up communications with the local Filipinos,
who, while liberated from their old Kampuchean masters, were leery of us as a replacement.
I believe it is imperative that we try to begin relations on the correct footing.
Also, one of my squadrons chanced upon a curious find.
While they were freeing some of the POWs in the Kampucheans’ holding facility, they found a native man being held in solitary confinement there.
Upon releasing him, the man attacked them, forcing them to subdue the individual and return him into confinement.
The oddest thing from their report, as I have read, is that the man appears to be pregnant, as odd as that sounds.
The locals had a strong aversion to the building to begin with, but when asked to identify the prisoner, no local would comply with our request, citing malevolent vibes emanating from that particular cell.
Fernando Guiterrez, the village elder, approached me and recommended that we execute the prisoner as soon as possible.
When I asked him, ‘Isn’t that man one of your own? Don’t you want him back after the Kampucheans imprisoned him?’,
he shook his head and replied, “No, he is not one of ours. And you would do well not to make him yours as well.”
Day 16:
I spoke with the civilian researcher Mr. Cao, today. He shared something interesting with me.
He noted that these natives strangely enough, shared the same kinds of names as people from Iberia did.
That’s halfway across the world! How could that be possible?
Quite a few of the natives had recognizably Han surnames as well, despite there never being any recorded interaction between the Empire and the Philippines before the war with the Kampucheans.
Two families even possessed Yamato surnames.
Perhaps the Filipinos were the result of ancient shipwrecked sailors? Maybe during the War of the Empresses?
That doesn’t explain the prevalence of Iberian surnames though.
Later in the day, I spoke to my colleague, Major Wu about the prisoner and what the village elder recommended we do with him.
Major Wu disagreed. He thought it would be a better idea to keep him alive and interrogate him.
Day 17:
Major Wu and I had entered the cell to interrogate the unusual native man.
At first, the subject was compliant with our demands and answered our questions without too much hassle.
But when we started to press about where he came from, he showed signs of agitation and refused to communicate.
The Major wasn’t having any of it and smacked the prisoner across the face, to which the prisoner whipped back from his chair and spat on his face.
I was about ready to retaliate in kind when I noticed the Major was reeling and covering his face.
Upon close inspection, the spit was black and viscous, and unlike any human secretion I had ever seen.
It appeared to be causing the Major great pain, so I quickly dragged him out and cut the interrogation short as Major Wu required immediate medical attention.
Day 18:
Our physician determined that there was nothing discernibly wrong with the Major.
He requested a sample of the viscous fluid that had struck Major Wu but it had long been cleaned off and the prisoner would not produce any more samples.
Major Wu ordered for the prisoner to be executed. We dragged him out of the cell and brought him to the village square,
as Mr. Guiterrez requested we do so in the event of the execution and chopped off the prisoner’s head as he shouted curses at us.
His blood was thick and black. Highly abnormal.
As soon as our soldiers leapt off the stage, the Filipinos began burning the execution platform.
I didn’t want to write this as I’m not one to give much stock in such nonsense but…
I couldn’t help but feel that the air in the village became much lighter when the prisoner died.
Day 19:
What’s Wu’s problem?
He called my patrol route drafts “sloppy” and “boneheaded” without giving me any reasoning.
We almost got into a fight until I decided to be the better man and walked out of the tent.
Later that day, I saw him spit in my tea! I subsequently threw it out.
I don’t have the authority to discipline him but the higher-ranking officers
will be sure to hear this from me in a few weeks time.
Day 20:
I didn’t believe it when I saw it.
Major Wu flew. He flew.
Let me start from the beginning.
I was awoken by some of my men, who notified me of some kind of disturbance near Major Wu’s quarters.
When I arrived on the scene with several of the men, he was flinging furniture across the hut and smashing pottery everywhere.
I was about to try to calm him down when he jumped out the window and down the hill below.
He glided down like some kind of bird or bat, descending upon a dozing private and carrying him off into the jungle.
With great haste, we seized some torches and gave chase after the airborne Major.
When we found him, his topknot was undone, long, unkempt black hair draping his back like seaweed.
The Major was on all fours, feasting on the entrails of the private he had carried off.
I still retch when I think back on that single horrifying moment when I saw him turn his head
towards us and dribble a sickening foam of saliva and human fat from the corners of his mouth.
I panicked and gave the order to fire. The men shot him down mid-flight before he could get away.
When we checked his body, he was riddled with crossbow bolts and heavily bleeding but somehow still alive.
Soon, the villagers arrived on the scene and Mr. Guiterrez pleaded with me to quickly restrain the Major if I wished to save him yet.
After what I saw him do, I agreed it was the best course of action and had my men restrain the Major
with heavy rope and drag him into the old Kampuchean prison where the pregnant man used to reside.
I met with the village elder in his home that same night to discuss what must be done and what Major Wu had become.
Mr. Guiterrez told me that he had become an aswang. A flesh eater with inhuman powers harboring nothing but contempt and malice for humans.
The condition, as I’m told by the elder, is transmitted through contact with saliva.
I asked him about his earlier comment that there was still time yet to save the Major.
He told me there was a narrow window but that he needed a day to prepare some kind of cleansing ceremony.
I readily agreed; after that experience, I could believe anything. We continued to converse well into the dawn.
Before I retired in the morning, I couldn’t help but remember the stories of Yōkai my great-grandfather used to tell me as a child.
Were they true too? I don’t want to think about it.
Day 22:
The night watch told me that he had been thrashing and trying to break free of his restraints all night.
Seeing that he wouldn’t go easy, we beat him over the head until he lost consciousness and dragged him over to the elder’s home where he had set up the cleansing site.
He instructed us to hang the Major upside-down by his feet while some of his followers pushed a cauldron in place underneath.
Mr. Guiterrez explained that spinning the aswang round and round would expel the source of the corruption; a black chick, as odd as that sounded.
We were to spin him continuously until the chick was ejected from his mouth, and into the boiling cauldron.
Knowing the Major didn’t have much time left, the men set to work immediately on spinning him.
Major Wu regained consciousness a few minutes after the water in the cauldron began boiling.
He- or at least his unhinged state of mind must have realized what was happening because
he started to emit the most inhuman sounding shriek I had ever heard.
The soldiers stopped spinning him momentarily, reeling from this disruption, but I commanded them to hold fast and keep spinning him.
True to the village elder’s word, a black chick spilled out of Major Wu’s mouth!
A collective scream emerged from the mouths of the natives as it bounced off the rim of the cauldron and made a mad dash for the door.
I chased it down and was able to crush it under my heel before it could escape, to the relief of the villagers.
They set my boot on fire too, just to make certain.
Day 23:
I’m told that Major Wu will make a recovery in a few days time. He’s been resting for days since the ceremony.
On the question of his status, he did kill and cannibalize a young private, but was not in his correct state of mind when he did so, making this a very difficult decision.
The men feel uneasy around him but I don’t want to execute a good fellow officer who is… in such a complicated evaluatory situation.
I’ll have to give it much more thought.
[THIS BOOK HAS BEEN CONFISCATED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF INQUIRIES FOR REVIEW]
Agent Xiangshe reporting,
The author of this journal as well as all persons present on the island of Guimaras at the time of these events have had their memories wiped.
An awareness breach has been averted. I was not able to find an opportunity to safely assess
or neutralize the aswang threat with my ichor gift as the mortals were in frequent motion at all times in the day.
The Imperial soldiers and the Filipinos were able to contain the crisis themselves however, as evidenced from the journal.
I have also found a potential generator on this particular island. Requesting a second dispatch to Guimaras to assist in verification.
Until then, I will continue my anthropological research in my mortal guise until further notice.
Glory to Nü Wa.
Agent Xiangshe, over and out.
Tomorrow's Dawn
Heroes Never Die
The Lurkers
Three riders transporting a supply cart pushed onward, despite the freezing cold.
Njeri bundled up as she rode along the frostbitten path, clinging close to her horse for warmth.
Its a good thing at least you the two of you answered the call. the man riding in front of her spoke.
What Im having a hard time understanding is that youre under attack? There arent any indigenous peoples in the Far North though.
And this is the furthest extent of Imperial territory; Honghuzi bandits are normally found stalking around the Manchurian trade hubs.
If theyre striking out this far, then its a little strange, the Malinese woman responded.
Well you see, were not under attack by people. their Sheriff guide answered.
The settlement was slowly coming into view as she followed close behind the grizzled Han Sheriff riding ahead.
Her companion, Fleming, the brown-haired Saxon man, shuddered in kind; not from the biting cold, but from relief that they had finally arrived at their destination.
The two Agents had been dispatched from their Manchurian base of operations in Libyan to investigate an anomaly detected in Yangjiang,
the northernmost point of the Chinese Empire. The summons itself was in response to a message from an Agent who had abandoned Kamchatka base and had gone on standby in Yangjiang.
As Yangjiang finally came into view, both Agents gasped as they were unprepared for the sight before them.
Welcome to Yangjiang. the Sherriff spoke softly.
This was not the pristine and cosmopolitan center of civilization like the gleaming Core of China, but the rough around the edges frontier.
Yet even for frontier standards, the state of disrepair here was appalling.
Family signs dangled above family homesteads and the entire settlement looked as if an earthquake had ravaged the downcast buildings.
As Njeri and Fleming rode through behind Sheriff Zhang, the damage to Yangjiang became apparent
not only in the dilapidated architecture, but in the hollowed eyes of the weary defenders.
Dozens of the local women were running to and fro with buckets of water and medical supplies.
Men with rifles lurched tensely over the makeshift barricades that formed the line of demarcation between the town and the woods.
And children cried hungrily in the corners as their parents were so consumed by their labors that they were forced to neglect them.
Njeri had been places before. Her missions had brought her to perpetually impoverished regions like the
Tartar lands and Varangia but it was certainly different to see home territory affected as such.
To see Han and Corean settlers in such squalid conditions was a huge shock to her.
Njeri and Fleming were immediately surrounded by the remainder of the able-bodied townsfolk, carrying off supplies and ammunition from their cart with great urgency.
What happened here? the Malinese woman asked.
It happens every night. Sheriff Zhang responded, his sharp breath manifesting in the cold air.
The Manchoos come from the woods in the north, n they try to take the town. We always beat them but they always get away with some of our womenfolk.
The Manchus have long been assimilated into the Empire and the Han bloodlines though. Fleming responded. There arent any left.
Oh, Nine Hells. Theyre not really Manchus. Truth told, we dont know what they are.
But they do everything like the Manchus of old. They tear out throats, carry off women n leave the houses in shambles.
Ah need bullets, Sheriff! a bearded man shouted as he approached the cart.
You can get some from Fleming here, Zhang directed him.
The man moved past him and as he looked up, saw the ethnic Saxon handing him a box of bullets and became furious.
I dont need no gorram Pinkie to help me none. the man snarled, pointing his revolver towards Fleming.
Easy now, The Sheriff intervened, lowering the mans arm. Theyre here to help. You best be saving your bullets fer when the Manchoos come.
When he saw that the militiaman did not avert his hateful gaze, he continued with a tone of sternness in his voice. Come on, now. Theyre good folk.
Aint no possibility o good in the world. Not after what I seen. the man grumbled as he walked away with some reluctance.
The Sheriff then turned to the two arrivals and apologized.
Yall have to excuse some of the townsfolk. Most o them aint never seen no non-Golden folk before. They aint tolerant like the folks in the Core.
Theyre not all that much better than you might think. Njeri thought to herself.
Theyre coming! shouted a lookout from atop a tower. Theyre coming in force! Everyone get ready!
Hundreds of pale, bipedal shapes began to emerge from the depths of the wood.
Njeri and Fleming shared a look of apprehension as more defenders scrambled into position.
Their sorcerous eyes saw that Lord Fu Xis barrier extended deep into the wood.
Yet, the inhuman creatures before them were standing here within the barrier and not harmed at all in the slightest.
A handful of nervous defenders fired off early shots, failing to down more than maybe two of the inhuman horde.
The shots only served to aggravate the monstrous host and a cacophony of horrible wailing could be heard splitting out of the gaping jaws of the beasts.
Hold your fire! Hold your fire! Sheriff Zhang commanded from atop his horse.
Wait till they come and mass your fire on their wings! Well encircle them and crush them within our palms!
At the snap of a twig, the Manchoo horde began to advance on the barricade, intent on forcing their way into Yangjiang.
The ragged militiamen immediately fired off a ferocious volley into the heart of the swarm,
felling several of the pale humanoids as their bodies consumed the bullets in a festival of carnage.
Fleming fired at will with his sidearm as Njeri reserved her shotgun for the ones that had climbed atop the wagons.
While several Manchoos had begun engaging in vicious hand to hand combat with the townsfolk, others decided to pour into the main street,
where they encountered resistance in the form of female snipers picking them off from the rooftops.
Daddy! a shrill scream sounded off.
My daughter! a man howled as he heard this, and as he attempted to break from the firing line, Njeri and Fleming restrained him.
Let me go! Let me go help my daughter!
Stay here and help hold the line! Fleming and I will try to rescue your daughter! Njeri tried to persuade him.
She looked him in the eye and held him firmly to let him know she was being sincere and as he calmed down and returned to the savage fighting, the two Agents bolted off for the house.
Njeri took point as she kicked down to door of the house to see a snarling pale fiend feasting on the entrails of an old man.
Nerves fired off as her finger squeezed the trigger and loosed a cluster of buckshot into the creature.
A number of children were shuddering underneath a table, hoping it would all be over soon.
Njeri knelt down near them and blasted another creature crawling towards them. Is there anyone upstairs? she asked.
Theres one more upstairs. Please save her! a little boy cried out.
Ill secure the first floor! You make your way upstairs! Fleming yelled as he expertly landed a bullet between another creatures eyes.
Njeri soon bumrushed up the stairs, finding one of the pale humanoids within her direct line of sight.
It was carrying a little girl over its shoulder and knowing it wasnt in a good position to fight, leapt out the second story window.
No you dont! she screamed as she chased it and leapt onto the creature midflight, causing the three of them to plummet onto the ground below.
The pale creature screamed in pain as Njeri used it to break her fall.
The little girl got up on her feet and recoiled as she saw that her inhuman abductor was still squirming.
Go! Run! Just get away from here! Njeri barked, spurring the girl to dart away.
Angry that its chosen mate had escaped it, the creature twisted around and lunged its head towards Njeri, intent on biting off her face.
But it halted as it only caught the barrel of her shotgun with its gaping mouth. Not smart, she growled as she pulled the trigger.
The house is clear! Fleming yelled as he came through one of the side doors, covered in blood.
Im done as well. Lets hurry back to the line, Njeri said, as she kicked the body aside and reloaded her shotgun.
By the time they had returned onto the main street, the battle was over. Militiamen and snipers were now picking off the survivors as they begun retreating back into the abyssal forest.
Perhaps it was serendipity that the casualties were low and no one had been abducted by the creatures.
The militiaman they had calmed down before was now reunited with his young daughter,
and upon catching sight of the Agents, rushed over towards them.
Thank ye! Thank ye so much! the man embraced Njeri in gratitude.
I aint never gonna forget this, I swear! he promised as he ran back off to help carry off the wounded.
As the scene slowed to a calm, the Agents reflected on the true extent of the present crisis.
Theyre certainly not human, thats for certain. Sheriff Zhang wasnt lying. Njeri spoke.
Its going to be difficult to contain an awareness breach of this size. Fleming commented.
As the mortals within the Chinese Empire went about their daily business, they did so unaware of the were guarded by the Barrier,
occluding them from view of the horrors and abominations that lurked within the Jewish sphere of civilization and elsewhere in secret.
Only the supernatural could see the ephemeral dome of light that accompanied the Empires borders.
And it was indeed intact here as they could quite clearly see, like it was elsewhere.
The Barrier prevents USB intrusion completely. Yet those creatures managed to step through without killing themselves. Njeri mused.
We need to speak to our contact right away and get to the bottom of this.
Im reaching him now Fleming responded as he began to operate his radio.
Weve arrived in Yangjiang and held off the attack. Awaiting your response, Fleming spoke through the receiver.
Bring me one of the corpses. Now that you've brought me some tools, I can finally get a good look at them, the voice on the other side responded.
Theres plenty.
Preferably one riddled with the least bullets.
Very well then.
The Agent residing in Yangjiang, known to the locals as Jiang, made his home on the eastern edge of town.
Fleming knocked on the door, prompting a response from the dweller within.
I trust you saw them? he asked with a bitter tone.
Of course. We just arrived to find the true extent of your problem.
It happens every night. Jiang scowled as he opened the door for his comrades.
The man who opened the door was tall and kept his hair long as most Han men did.
He looked as if he had not been sleeping well for the past few days, though it wasnt hard to see why, as Njeri observed.
The secret cache in the cart was pried open and revealed an array of
advanced medical technology and sophisticated surgical tools not yet ready for this time.
Njeri began to bring it into the house while Fleming pushed the body inside.
Ill take you to the operating room. Its not up to par from my old facilities, but it was the best I could do on short notice. Jiang said as he moved a shelf aside to reveal a hidden door.
The two Agents entered the secret passage and soon emerged into Jiangs makeshift research facility,
which was littered with assorted electronics and computers, two assault rifles and various scrap metals.
An operating table with an overhead light connected to a small electrical generator served as the centerpiece of the room.
We can begin the autopsy. Sterilize yourselves and bring out the body.
The Kamchatka outpost was overrun by those things. Im the only one left. Everything you see here was what I was able to salvage.
There were only four of us, you know. But I havent received any word from Louyang on whether or not Im getting any more assistance, apart from the two of you.
Ive been pressing for backup but apparently, others in the Bureaucracy think their little pet projects
are more important than the situation in Yangjiang here. the surgeon remarked as he put on his latex gloves.
Now that weve seen the situation firsthand, were quite inclined to agree with your sentiment,
Fleming replied as he shoved the cadaver onto the operating table.
The taint is quite prevalent in these creatures. Jiang said. I had hypothesized that something within their bodies allowed them to slip through the Barrier,
but I had no way of discerning as my medical tools were lost when I abandoned Kamchatka outpost.
The surgeon carefully made the first incision on the creatures left breast and proceeded to continue from there,
based on what he knew about normal human anatomy.
Two hearts. Jiang exclaimed as he opened up the creatures chest.
Thats not normal. Njeri remarked.
There is nothing about this specimen that is normal. the surgeon responded in kind.
Two more hours were spent as Jiang continued to examine the internal intricacies of the pale beast.
Ive gained everything I needed to know from the autopsy. Jiang said as he finished examining the brain.
Expect a write-up to be logged into the Strange Tales by sunrise.
Can you give us the gist of it, Jiang? Njeri asked.
Well, it isnt like our own immunity to the Barrier, of which was provided to us by Lord Fu Xi.
While the amount of taint signature found on these lets call them Lurkers appear to be incredible,
they are able to pass through the Barrier because their signature is muted. I dont know how else to put it.
However, their significantly reduced cerebral cortex size appears to be the compromise.
Its the likely reason why their behavior is so animalistic; observably, their only conscious concerns appear to be eating and procreating.
Now, I dont have any way to prove it at the moment, but I am convinced that there is a link between that factor and their muted taint.
I just need some assistance to prove it,
But, at this point, we have other priorities at hand, Jiang continued as he began removing his surgical apparatus.
A unit of the Tiger Vanguard is scheduled to reach Yangjiang in twenty days, at the request of the local Sheriff.
The Bureau contingent in Linzi has been able to delay their advance via mortal bureaucracy,
but I dont know if thats enough time to raise a strike team and exterminate the Lurker population in time.
Alright then. Eighteen days is our timetable. Fleming spoke up. Now we just have to deal with the awareness brea-
Im afraid were too late. the surgeon interrupted. Some of the fur traders that have entered Yangjiang have witnessed the attacks and heard the stories;
rushing off back to their own towns and spreading word. Averting a full-scale awareness breach at this point is not possible.
The only thing we can do now is to obfuscate the lurkers existence from the Imperial Army.
If they find out the truth and extent of the USB threat, the wool will be pulled from off their eyes
and itll make it that much harder for us to puppeteer the military.
Lets get to work then, Njeri stated.
Three riders transporting a supply cart pushed onward, despite the freezing cold.
Njeri bundled up as she rode along the frostbitten path, clinging close to her horse for warmth.
Its a good thing at least you the two of you answered the call. the man riding in front of her spoke.
What Im having a hard time understanding is that youre under attack? There arent any indigenous peoples in the Far North though.
And this is the furthest extent of Imperial territory; Honghuzi bandits are normally found stalking around the Manchurian trade hubs.
If theyre striking out this far, then its a little strange, the Malinese woman responded.
Well you see, were not under attack by people. their Sheriff guide answered.
The settlement was slowly coming into view as she followed close behind the grizzled Han Sheriff riding ahead.
Her companion, Fleming, the brown-haired Saxon man, shuddered in kind; not from the biting cold, but from relief that they had finally arrived at their destination.
The two Agents had been dispatched from their Manchurian base of operations in Libyan to investigate an anomaly detected in Yangjiang,
the northernmost point of the Chinese Empire. The summons itself was in response to a message from an Agent who had abandoned Kamchatka base and had gone on standby in Yangjiang.
As Yangjiang finally came into view, both Agents gasped as they were unprepared for the sight before them.
Welcome to Yangjiang. the Sherriff spoke softly.
This was not the pristine and cosmopolitan center of civilization like the gleaming Core of China, but the rough around the edges frontier.
Yet even for frontier standards, the state of disrepair here was appalling.
Family signs dangled above family homesteads and the entire settlement looked as if an earthquake had ravaged the downcast buildings.
As Njeri and Fleming rode through behind Sheriff Zhang, the damage to Yangjiang became apparent
not only in the dilapidated architecture, but in the hollowed eyes of the weary defenders.
Dozens of the local women were running to and fro with buckets of water and medical supplies.
Men with rifles lurched tensely over the makeshift barricades that formed the line of demarcation between the town and the woods.
And children cried hungrily in the corners as their parents were so consumed by their labors that they were forced to neglect them.
Njeri had been places before. Her missions had brought her to perpetually impoverished regions like the
Tartar lands and Varangia but it was certainly different to see home territory affected as such.
To see Han and Corean settlers in such squalid conditions was a huge shock to her.
Njeri and Fleming were immediately surrounded by the remainder of the able-bodied townsfolk, carrying off supplies and ammunition from their cart with great urgency.
What happened here? the Malinese woman asked.
It happens every night. Sheriff Zhang responded, his sharp breath manifesting in the cold air.
The Manchoos come from the woods in the north, n they try to take the town. We always beat them but they always get away with some of our womenfolk.
The Manchus have long been assimilated into the Empire and the Han bloodlines though. Fleming responded. There arent any left.
Oh, Nine Hells. Theyre not really Manchus. Truth told, we dont know what they are.
But they do everything like the Manchus of old. They tear out throats, carry off women n leave the houses in shambles.
Ah need bullets, Sheriff! a bearded man shouted as he approached the cart.
You can get some from Fleming here, Zhang directed him.
The man moved past him and as he looked up, saw the ethnic Saxon handing him a box of bullets and became furious.
I dont need no gorram Pinkie to help me none. the man snarled, pointing his revolver towards Fleming.
Easy now, The Sheriff intervened, lowering the mans arm. Theyre here to help. You best be saving your bullets fer when the Manchoos come.
When he saw that the militiaman did not avert his hateful gaze, he continued with a tone of sternness in his voice. Come on, now. Theyre good folk.
Aint no possibility o good in the world. Not after what I seen. the man grumbled as he walked away with some reluctance.
The Sheriff then turned to the two arrivals and apologized.
Yall have to excuse some of the townsfolk. Most o them aint never seen no non-Golden folk before. They aint tolerant like the folks in the Core.
Theyre not all that much better than you might think. Njeri thought to herself.
Theyre coming! shouted a lookout from atop a tower. Theyre coming in force! Everyone get ready!
Hundreds of pale, bipedal shapes began to emerge from the depths of the wood.
Njeri and Fleming shared a look of apprehension as more defenders scrambled into position.
Their sorcerous eyes saw that Lord Fu Xis barrier extended deep into the wood.
Yet, the inhuman creatures before them were standing here within the barrier and not harmed at all in the slightest.
A handful of nervous defenders fired off early shots, failing to down more than maybe two of the inhuman horde.
The shots only served to aggravate the monstrous host and a cacophony of horrible wailing could be heard splitting out of the gaping jaws of the beasts.
Hold your fire! Hold your fire! Sheriff Zhang commanded from atop his horse.
Wait till they come and mass your fire on their wings! Well encircle them and crush them within our palms!
At the snap of a twig, the Manchoo horde began to advance on the barricade, intent on forcing their way into Yangjiang.
The ragged militiamen immediately fired off a ferocious volley into the heart of the swarm,
felling several of the pale humanoids as their bodies consumed the bullets in a festival of carnage.
Fleming fired at will with his sidearm as Njeri reserved her shotgun for the ones that had climbed atop the wagons.
While several Manchoos had begun engaging in vicious hand to hand combat with the townsfolk, others decided to pour into the main street,
where they encountered resistance in the form of female snipers picking them off from the rooftops.
Daddy! a shrill scream sounded off.
My daughter! a man howled as he heard this, and as he attempted to break from the firing line, Njeri and Fleming restrained him.
Let me go! Let me go help my daughter!
Stay here and help hold the line! Fleming and I will try to rescue your daughter! Njeri tried to persuade him.
She looked him in the eye and held him firmly to let him know she was being sincere and as he calmed down and returned to the savage fighting, the two Agents bolted off for the house.
Njeri took point as she kicked down to door of the house to see a snarling pale fiend feasting on the entrails of an old man.
Nerves fired off as her finger squeezed the trigger and loosed a cluster of buckshot into the creature.
A number of children were shuddering underneath a table, hoping it would all be over soon.
Njeri knelt down near them and blasted another creature crawling towards them. Is there anyone upstairs? she asked.
Theres one more upstairs. Please save her! a little boy cried out.
Ill secure the first floor! You make your way upstairs! Fleming yelled as he expertly landed a bullet between another creatures eyes.
Njeri soon bumrushed up the stairs, finding one of the pale humanoids within her direct line of sight.
It was carrying a little girl over its shoulder and knowing it wasnt in a good position to fight, leapt out the second story window.
No you dont! she screamed as she chased it and leapt onto the creature midflight, causing the three of them to plummet onto the ground below.
The pale creature screamed in pain as Njeri used it to break her fall.
The little girl got up on her feet and recoiled as she saw that her inhuman abductor was still squirming.
Go! Run! Just get away from here! Njeri barked, spurring the girl to dart away.
Angry that its chosen mate had escaped it, the creature twisted around and lunged its head towards Njeri, intent on biting off her face.
But it halted as it only caught the barrel of her shotgun with its gaping mouth. Not smart, she growled as she pulled the trigger.
The house is clear! Fleming yelled as he came through one of the side doors, covered in blood.
Im done as well. Lets hurry back to the line, Njeri said, as she kicked the body aside and reloaded her shotgun.
By the time they had returned onto the main street, the battle was over. Militiamen and snipers were now picking off the survivors as they begun retreating back into the abyssal forest.
Perhaps it was serendipity that the casualties were low and no one had been abducted by the creatures.
The militiaman they had calmed down before was now reunited with his young daughter,
and upon catching sight of the Agents, rushed over towards them.
Thank ye! Thank ye so much! the man embraced Njeri in gratitude.
I aint never gonna forget this, I swear! he promised as he ran back off to help carry off the wounded.
As the scene slowed to a calm, the Agents reflected on the true extent of the present crisis.
Theyre certainly not human, thats for certain. Sheriff Zhang wasnt lying. Njeri spoke.
Its going to be difficult to contain an awareness breach of this size. Fleming commented.
As the mortals within the Chinese Empire went about their daily business, they did so unaware of the were guarded by the Barrier,
occluding them from view of the horrors and abominations that lurked within the Jewish sphere of civilization and elsewhere in secret.
Only the supernatural could see the ephemeral dome of light that accompanied the Empires borders.
And it was indeed intact here as they could quite clearly see, like it was elsewhere.
The Barrier prevents USB intrusion completely. Yet those creatures managed to step through without killing themselves. Njeri mused.
We need to speak to our contact right away and get to the bottom of this.
Im reaching him now Fleming responded as he began to operate his radio.
Weve arrived in Yangjiang and held off the attack. Awaiting your response, Fleming spoke through the receiver.
Bring me one of the corpses. Now that you've brought me some tools, I can finally get a good look at them, the voice on the other side responded.
Theres plenty.
Preferably one riddled with the least bullets.
Very well then.
The Agent residing in Yangjiang, known to the locals as Jiang, made his home on the eastern edge of town.
Fleming knocked on the door, prompting a response from the dweller within.
I trust you saw them? he asked with a bitter tone.
Of course. We just arrived to find the true extent of your problem.
It happens every night. Jiang scowled as he opened the door for his comrades.
The man who opened the door was tall and kept his hair long as most Han men did.
He looked as if he had not been sleeping well for the past few days, though it wasnt hard to see why, as Njeri observed.
The secret cache in the cart was pried open and revealed an array of
advanced medical technology and sophisticated surgical tools not yet ready for this time.
Njeri began to bring it into the house while Fleming pushed the body inside.
Ill take you to the operating room. Its not up to par from my old facilities, but it was the best I could do on short notice. Jiang said as he moved a shelf aside to reveal a hidden door.
The two Agents entered the secret passage and soon emerged into Jiangs makeshift research facility,
which was littered with assorted electronics and computers, two assault rifles and various scrap metals.
An operating table with an overhead light connected to a small electrical generator served as the centerpiece of the room.
We can begin the autopsy. Sterilize yourselves and bring out the body.
The Kamchatka outpost was overrun by those things. Im the only one left. Everything you see here was what I was able to salvage.
There were only four of us, you know. But I havent received any word from Louyang on whether or not Im getting any more assistance, apart from the two of you.
Ive been pressing for backup but apparently, others in the Bureaucracy think their little pet projects
are more important than the situation in Yangjiang here. the surgeon remarked as he put on his latex gloves.
Now that weve seen the situation firsthand, were quite inclined to agree with your sentiment,
Fleming replied as he shoved the cadaver onto the operating table.
The taint is quite prevalent in these creatures. Jiang said. I had hypothesized that something within their bodies allowed them to slip through the Barrier,
but I had no way of discerning as my medical tools were lost when I abandoned Kamchatka outpost.
The surgeon carefully made the first incision on the creatures left breast and proceeded to continue from there,
based on what he knew about normal human anatomy.
Two hearts. Jiang exclaimed as he opened up the creatures chest.
Thats not normal. Njeri remarked.
There is nothing about this specimen that is normal. the surgeon responded in kind.
Two more hours were spent as Jiang continued to examine the internal intricacies of the pale beast.
Ive gained everything I needed to know from the autopsy. Jiang said as he finished examining the brain.
Expect a write-up to be logged into the Strange Tales by sunrise.
Can you give us the gist of it, Jiang? Njeri asked.
Well, it isnt like our own immunity to the Barrier, of which was provided to us by Lord Fu Xi.
While the amount of taint signature found on these lets call them Lurkers appear to be incredible,
they are able to pass through the Barrier because their signature is muted. I dont know how else to put it.
However, their significantly reduced cerebral cortex size appears to be the compromise.
Its the likely reason why their behavior is so animalistic; observably, their only conscious concerns appear to be eating and procreating.
Now, I dont have any way to prove it at the moment, but I am convinced that there is a link between that factor and their muted taint.
I just need some assistance to prove it,
But, at this point, we have other priorities at hand, Jiang continued as he began removing his surgical apparatus.
A unit of the Tiger Vanguard is scheduled to reach Yangjiang in twenty days, at the request of the local Sheriff.
The Bureau contingent in Linzi has been able to delay their advance via mortal bureaucracy,
but I dont know if thats enough time to raise a strike team and exterminate the Lurker population in time.
Alright then. Eighteen days is our timetable. Fleming spoke up. Now we just have to deal with the awareness brea-
Im afraid were too late. the surgeon interrupted. Some of the fur traders that have entered Yangjiang have witnessed the attacks and heard the stories;
rushing off back to their own towns and spreading word. Averting a full-scale awareness breach at this point is not possible.
The only thing we can do now is to obfuscate the lurkers existence from the Imperial Army.
If they find out the truth and extent of the USB threat, the wool will be pulled from off their eyes
and itll make it that much harder for us to puppeteer the military.
Lets get to work then, Njeri stated.
Optical
The Fall of the Eleventh
I'm still here! Nice to see this back on track
Tomorrow's Dawn
Heroes Never Die
Clothing In The Empire: The 1500s
The 1500s were a time of massive and sweeping changes in lifestyle and society,
brought about by a wealth of technological innovations that came to life from the greatest minds the Empire had yet produced.
Industry roared in Chinese cities from Gansu to the conquered Aryan lands.
Rifles and cannons stood guard at the gates and ports of major urban centers.
The cities remained perpetually illuminated in color, even during the dead of night; as if they were lone bastions of light holding out atop a sea of darkness.
Indeed, the 1500s was a brand new era. And of the clearest indicators of this transition was the clothing.
While many Chinese citizens, particularly upper class Nao Caste intellectuals, country-dwellers and Xin Caste entertainers still wore the hanfu on occasion,
the style had seen a sharp drop in relevance to the period.
This was especially evident amongst urban laborers, who needed to wear more economical and functional clothing during the course of their work.
In upper class circles, a desire emerged to see something different
High fashion boomed during this period as tailors and designers were frequently approached to design bolder articles of clothing for wealthy clients.
Two distinct styles emerged as a result, stemming directly from this explosion of interest.
The hanfu of course, was still seen as a symbol of prestige and the power that came with the Sinitic civilization.
But its time had largely passed and the 1500s became defined by the following:
Eastern Style
Eastern Style emerged from the eponymous eastern seaboard cities of Dailiang and Huiji.
It was first developed as a more utilitarian alternative to the commoner's hanfu for work within the factory.
The first "grandfather" of Eastern Style clothes was the coverall.
Dangerous working conditions in the first highly mechanized factories spurred on the development of the piece,
although that fact only came to light through Sun Haozi's expose The Forest.
From the development of the coverall though, came the birth of a large market for new types of clothing that fell under the umbrella of the Eastern Style family.
As workers during this period typically had long and unregulated work hours, they typically went around town in their work clothes.
Some of the better-paid workers such as the foremen and the managers took to requesting their own uniforms to be tailor-made,
which spurred the development of a variety of different styles, not all utilitarian, and over time,
more fashionable pieces like the suit and the dress slowly evolved from these concepts.
Eastern style clothing during this period was mostly popular in the Core of China, Chaoxian Province & the Northern Frontier.
Manchu Style
A minor Xia princess named Xia Jielin is credited as the founder of the style.
She was descended from a northern sect of the Xia princes and the last of the Manchu royal princesses who were married into the family as a direct result from the subjugation of Libyan.
By the details of her own memoirs, as a young girl, she was shown the traditional form of dress of her ancestral grandmothers and became enamored with its design.
She sought to revive Manchu clothing, but knew thought the make was barbarian and knew she had to tailor the design to discerning Han tastes.
When she unveiled the first iterations of her Manchu revival clothing, Core China was floored and Xia Jielin Manchu Style garments dominated the scene.
The most popular proved to be the qipao (a long, collared dress with slits cut in the lower half for the legs) for women and the tangzhuang (a collared suit) for men.
Together, they stood out to represent and exemplify the style as a whole.
Manchu style clothing enjoyed a co-existence with Eastern style clothing in the Core, but failed to achieve the critical mass necessary in Chaoxian and the Northern Frontier.
Instead, Wa Province readily adopted the qipao and the tangzhuang and they became the preferred styles of clothing for Imperial Citizens throughout the archipelago.
The 1500s were a time of massive and sweeping changes in lifestyle and society,
brought about by a wealth of technological innovations that came to life from the greatest minds the Empire had yet produced.
Industry roared in Chinese cities from Gansu to the conquered Aryan lands.
Rifles and cannons stood guard at the gates and ports of major urban centers.
The cities remained perpetually illuminated in color, even during the dead of night; as if they were lone bastions of light holding out atop a sea of darkness.
Indeed, the 1500s was a brand new era. And of the clearest indicators of this transition was the clothing.
While many Chinese citizens, particularly upper class Nao Caste intellectuals, country-dwellers and Xin Caste entertainers still wore the hanfu on occasion,
the style had seen a sharp drop in relevance to the period.
This was especially evident amongst urban laborers, who needed to wear more economical and functional clothing during the course of their work.
In upper class circles, a desire emerged to see something different
High fashion boomed during this period as tailors and designers were frequently approached to design bolder articles of clothing for wealthy clients.
Two distinct styles emerged as a result, stemming directly from this explosion of interest.
The hanfu of course, was still seen as a symbol of prestige and the power that came with the Sinitic civilization.
But its time had largely passed and the 1500s became defined by the following:
Eastern Style
Eastern Style emerged from the eponymous eastern seaboard cities of Dailiang and Huiji.
It was first developed as a more utilitarian alternative to the commoner's hanfu for work within the factory.
The first "grandfather" of Eastern Style clothes was the coverall.
Dangerous working conditions in the first highly mechanized factories spurred on the development of the piece,
although that fact only came to light through Sun Haozi's expose The Forest.
From the development of the coverall though, came the birth of a large market for new types of clothing that fell under the umbrella of the Eastern Style family.
As workers during this period typically had long and unregulated work hours, they typically went around town in their work clothes.
Some of the better-paid workers such as the foremen and the managers took to requesting their own uniforms to be tailor-made,
which spurred the development of a variety of different styles, not all utilitarian, and over time,
more fashionable pieces like the suit and the dress slowly evolved from these concepts.
Eastern style clothing during this period was mostly popular in the Core of China, Chaoxian Province & the Northern Frontier.
Manchu Style
A minor Xia princess named Xia Jielin is credited as the founder of the style.
She was descended from a northern sect of the Xia princes and the last of the Manchu royal princesses who were married into the family as a direct result from the subjugation of Libyan.
By the details of her own memoirs, as a young girl, she was shown the traditional form of dress of her ancestral grandmothers and became enamored with its design.
She sought to revive Manchu clothing, but knew thought the make was barbarian and knew she had to tailor the design to discerning Han tastes.
When she unveiled the first iterations of her Manchu revival clothing, Core China was floored and Xia Jielin Manchu Style garments dominated the scene.
The most popular proved to be the qipao (a long, collared dress with slits cut in the lower half for the legs) for women and the tangzhuang (a collared suit) for men.
Together, they stood out to represent and exemplify the style as a whole.
Manchu style clothing enjoyed a co-existence with Eastern style clothing in the Core, but failed to achieve the critical mass necessary in Chaoxian and the Northern Frontier.
Instead, Wa Province readily adopted the qipao and the tangzhuang and they became the preferred styles of clothing for Imperial Citizens throughout the archipelago.
Tomorrow's Dawn
Heroes Never Die
Alright, readers.
I know you've all become tired of my monster-of-the-week exhibition and long absences between updates.
Now that I have covered a lot of background out of the way so that you have an inkling of the many
unseen threats to humanity outside the Chinese Empire, I can return to the mortals.
As you can see, the Chinese are at a late industrial/early modern state of civilization.
And the important social developments that occur at that stage of growth will be covered now as part of the main story.
I hope you enjoy the upcoming saga and the return of proper updates to the main story begins now.
Bellow The Bottom
A woman and her child sat at an outdoor café table in Dailiang, getting ready to start the day.
“Mommy needs some Arabian coffee before she can start shopping today. What do you want to eat here at the café, darling?”
the woman asked her daughter as she adjusted the brim of her hat while flipping through her menu.
“I want a green tea cake with azuki filling!”
“Of course! Anything for you, pussycat. We’re going to get you a new qipao today too.
Or maybe another a dress. And maybe a hanbok or a yukata, for summer of course.”
The woman called for a waiter to take her order as her daughter looked around.
The café was adorned with posters depicting hideous men and women cowering before the might of the Generalissimo and his police force.
Many of the posters featured bold, white lettering with slogans such as:
“Know Your Caste. Know Your Place.” and “Unions Equate To Barbarism! Uphold Chinese virtues and report suspected union members today!!”
The little girl didn’t know how to read the characters yet, but the way the pictures were drawn,
in harsh whites and blues, scared her and made her think they were bad.
“Mommy, mommy! What do those posters say? They look scary.”
The woman looked at the posters, nodded in approval of its content, and adjusted her fur boa.
At this moment, the coffee along with the cake had arrived, brimming with sugary goodness.
“Oh darling, go eat your cake. Let Mommy and Daddy worry about it, mm?” she said as she got up for a minute.
“Mommy’s going to use the restroom for a moment. Do be a good girl while I’m gone, alright?” she smiled as she left.
Left to her own devices, the little girl started eating.
The waiter came back with some crayons and paper and fairly soon, she was absorbed within her coloring. Until she heard it.
“Hi. Miss?” a voice called out from behind the little girl.
As she turned it around, she saw a little boy, not that much older than herself, holding out a cap, begging for money.
“Please…I’m hungry and I just need a few yuan to go down the street and buy a mantou.”
The contrast between the two of them couldn’t be more pronounced.
The boy wore a ragged, patchwork jacket with worn-out trousers and shoes.
Prim and proper in her lacy forest-green Eastern style dress and well-kept appearance, she looked like she was worlds removed from him.
She felt very sorry for him. He looked like he had never eaten good food before. So she broke her green tea cake in half and gave one to him.
“I’m saving up for a doll I wanted.“ she beamed. “But you can have half my cake!”
His eyes widened at the sight of it. “Really?”
As soon as he took the piece in hand, the girl was yanked backwards by a tall,
flustered woman who appeared utterly disgusted by the sight of him.
“Darling!! You must get away from that filthy street urchin!” the woman berated her.
“But Mommy, he-” but the little girl was interrupted.
“Pussycat, please do be more careful next time. Don’t talk to the common people on the street.
You never know what kind of muck they’ve been rolling around in. Next time, don’t give them anything.”
her mother said as she snatched up her coffee and hurried her daughter along.
“Put it on my tab, I’ll pay next time,” she called to the waiter. The girl looked back at the street urchin,
ribbons in her hair trailing in the wind, before her mother hustled her back into their private vehicle.
She was kind, he thought, not like most people he had solicited, as he was shooed away by the café manager.
In the safety of a back alley, he looked down at the green tea cake.
Without thinking, he stuffed it into his mouth whole and cried while chewing.
It wasn’t even the fact that the cake was so good.
It was that he hadn’t eaten solid food in days and that he was supposed to find food for his parents and brother.
And here he was, chewing and chewing, and not stopping.
And now it laid in his belly, heavy as a rock; a cruel reminder of what he had done.
He hurried back to his family’s shack further down the way.
“Big brother, did you find any food?” a younger boy called out as he approached, jumping off of a trash can.
“No.” he lied. “No one would give me any.”
“We need to tell Mother then.” the boy said, dispirited.
The two boys soon made their way to the shack, where their mother was boiling a stew.
That would actually be a stretch. She was stretching the stew that was mostly water, bits of cabbage and strained soy sauce at this point.
Their mother was slender but very weathered, appearing slightly older for her age, no doubt from the stress.
“We couldn’t get any food, Mother. I was only able to collect twenty Yuan.”
the older child said with his face downcast as he handed his mother the coins.
“It’s been hard for all of us,” she said stoically. “Since your father’s been fired from the ironworks.
That’s why I need you two boys to help more. We wouldn’t ask this of you if things weren’t so hard.”
“Mother, why won’t the factory owners let him go back to work?” her youngest son asked.
“I…”
Her husband had been blacklisted by Huang Ge Tie Corporation for being suspected of unionizing.
Not only was he barred from working in the iron industry again, but he was barred from all other professions as well.
He was out looking for work today, but she knew better than to get her hopes up.
She had heard that across the sea, in Wa Province cities like Shanghai and Kyoto,
that the government was moving much of its production base there, where unions hadn’t sprang up. Yet.
She was scared though, that her husband was keeping secrets from her.
That he actually had joined a union and that he had doomed them all to poverty and starvation.
“Mother. Tell us that Father will find a job. Tell us it’s going to be okay. Please.” her children began tugging on her leg.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be okay.”
The State of the Most Important Nations of the 1500s
The Chinese Empire
Link to video.
Over the course of two centuries, the Xia Emperors and Empresses had grown weaker and weaker, with the re-introduction of imperial polygamy.
The Chinese Empire while still powerful and prestigious, lacked the leadership of the Xia Emperors and instead, fell under the control of a capitalist junta.
The capitalist junta kept the royals in Louyang complacent by supplying the harems with beautiful men and women extracted from all corners of the Empire.
They were instructed to distract them from governing and fulfill their every desire so as to cement the junta’s control over governing affairs.
The current head of the central government, although not official, was the Generalissimo, Liu Zhonghai, ruling from the effective capital of Huiji.
Generalissimo Liu Zhonghai held a complete stranglehold on the Chinese political process.
He had extensive and powerful support from varied groups like Core Chinese corporate trusts, corrupt governors, the Chaoxian bureaucracy and Yamato zaibatsu families.
Together with their allies and supporters, they controlled almost up to 72% of the wealth in Imperial China.
The majority of these shareholders were of the Nao Caste, but of the mercantile varieties and not the scholarly,
while the majority of the poor and destitute were Li Caste laborers, setting the stage for both class and Caste warfare.
During this period, Lin Dehuai, the Commander of the Motherland Defense Army, distanced himself from the Generalissimo.
Within private circles, he was known to abhor the Generalissimo’s policies and refused to carry out his directives to massacre the poor and oppress the workers.
He cleverly sidestepped them by justifying that the bulk of the Army had to be relocated north,
on the Manchurian frontier to monitor Polish-Lithuanian military activity against Tartar rebels.
With a large portion of the Empire’s industrial base under his control, he was able to effectively hinder the Generalissimo’s arms production
as the firearms trust in Core China was suffering from a rash of worker strikes.
Lin Dehuai and the MDA had effectively seceded from the Chinese Empire, governing the Northern territories and northern Chaoxian as its own independent state.
He and his men were still loyal to the royal Xia family however and did not consider themselves separate from the Empire,
but the last time an imperial edict had come out of the city of Louyang was over fifty years ago.
Efforts have been made to contact the Imperial Xia in Louyang but they have all ended in failure.
The Generalissimo could not count on the armies stationed in former Aryan and Vajra territory to return to homeland and give him the option
to either initiate civil war with Lin Dehuai or quell the upstart Li Caste populations as they had their hands full in stabilizing the conquered territories.
New factories were raised in Kyushu and Honshu in response, and private armies,
blurring the line between police, military and mercenary were raised as an alternative to carry out the will of the Generalissimo and his allies, primarily in busting unions and spying on worker rallies.
The capitalist junta did have one more ace up their sleeve however, as the bulk of the Tortoise Armada, the Chinese naval forces, were aligned with the Generalissimo.
With the ability to restrict the flow of supplies and control sea traffic, it made the political situation in the Empire even more tense.
Judeo-Babylon
Meanwhile, in Judeo-Babylon, the second-greatest empire in the world began to undego changes of its own.
Queen Rebecca Khalid-Zuckerburg, also nicknamed “The Virgin Queen”, ascends to the Judeo-Babylonian throne at the tender age of fifteen.
The young queen was very popular amongst the Jewish and Babylonian population as she personified hope and optimism with her youth.
One of her first edicts as Queen was to raise investigative councils in Hevron.
Hevron, the Jewish Holy City, also held the dubious honor of the murder capital of the world.
It was primarily here and in other Judeo-Babylonian cities that a strange, almost ritualized kind of murder where the victim was completely drained of blood happened with alarming frequency.
She succeeded in regulating the wealthy landlords in the populated urban centers and forced them to lower rents,
as Judeo-Babylon had been suffering from intense rioting over unsustainable living costs in the cities.
She also attempted to reform the military structure of the declining empire by incorporating and importing rifled firearms and gunpowder artillery,
which were being developed in Austro-Hungary; a Judeo-Babylonian ally, independently of the Chinese Empire.
Her reforms were met with fierce opposition by General James Bernstein and his clique of conservatives,
who held a chokehold on a vast portion of the saltpeter supply in Judeo-Babylon.
It was rumored that General Bernstein was planning a coup d’état against the Virgin Queen.
The Dual Kingdom of Austro-Hungary
The Dual Kingdom of Austro-Hungary was not always the esteemed scientific nexus of the Western world.
Their early history was tribal, with the Austrians being closely related to the Saxon peoples,
but at a certain point, they became one family with the Hungarians who arrived from the east.
The Dual Kingdom, second to Judeo-Babylon, is perhaps the most loved Hamitic nation for their success.
The country is prosperous and enjoys a military and marriage alliance with Abydos as well as good relations all around with all of its neighbors, save for De Guo (Saxony).
The first Austro-Hungarian developments were a result of espionage carried out across the border into the Chinese territory of De Guo (Saxony).
They were able to reverse engineer Chinese muskets for their own purposes and from there, spurring an increased emphasis on science and mathematics,
Austro-Hungarian engineers and scientists were able to introduce a wealth of innovations into daily life.
The Chinese Empire has imposed trade embargos and closed the border between De Guo and Austro-Hungary in response,
but the spirit of innovation remains strong in the small country and they possess an enviable status amongst Japhethic countries.
They are technologically on par with the mighty Chinese Empire, and are widely thought to be able to stand a chance against the invincible Imperials in pitched battle.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth possesses and flaunts the greatest military power Aozhou has ever seen.
Along with Iberia, they dominate much of the Varangian population and exploit them to their own ends.
They have also been known to exert much influence on the little state of Mycenae,
where it is expected they will achieve a formal takeover in the coming years.
Their increasing domination of Tartar lands is also becoming nearly complete.
This aggressive, expansive foreign policy must be explained with some background.
The Polish-Lithuanians were odd amongst their Hamitic neighbors for the adoption of Christianity,
a religion originating from Arabia, which is now a Chinese province.
Although Polish-Lithuanian Christians had denounced Arabic Christianity for aligning with China, they continued to follow its tenets in a new form.
Ultra-Orthodox Christianity was born in the Commonwealth Motherlands and its extreme, reactionary nature influenced many aspects of Commonwealth culture.
The Polish-Lithuanians still considered themselves Hamitic peoples, but believed their neighbors were too
soft and feminine to stand up to the Chinese Empire; particularly the Saxons,
whom they denounced as whores and half-men for their association with the Han.
They rejected the Chinese terms for their race; Pink was the byword for Far Western, Oceanian and Meizhou peoples; a lowly and feminine color unfit to represent them.
“Aozhou peoples” was also unacceptable to them; because to accept the Chinese terminology as the lingua franca robbed them of their pride.
Polish Master Race, or PMR, became the accepted standard amongst nationalistic Polish-Lithuanians.
All of these factors led to a dangerous mixture that was highly nationalistic, chauvinistic and religious, all in one.
This ideology became known as the White Terror.
The Sejm (the governing parliament of the Commonwealth) had waged four successive wars across several centuries against the Grand Khanate,
slowly occupying and mincing the nomadic confederation into piecemeal over time.
Even before White Terror ideology became the standard, successive Sejms dreamed of being the Hand of God to bring ruin to the heathen Chinese.
The Tartars of the Grand Khanate, being close to the Han in both race and proximity, were seen as a stepping stone.
However, on the advent of their fifth invasion, they were not satisfied with the slow progress of the occupation,
and were greatly embarrassed by their failure to make any meaningful advances into the veritable rebel seas.
New commanders and officers in Tartar lands were thus given the Postal Directive from the Sejm.
The Polish-Lithuanians were to systematically rape and massacre their way through the Grand Khanate,
and often used rape indiscriminately to placate populations, although it was already prevalent enough in past wars.
The Postal Directive only made rebel Tartar groups fight harder. It had a number of other side effects though.
By the mid 1500s, it is estimated that nearly half of the Tartar population was born through rape and possessed either a Polish or Lithuanian fatherhood.
The most notable incident, known as “The Rape of Sarai” was documented by a Dr. Zhou Kang and Madam Xu,
who helped provide refuge to almost twenty-five thousand Tartars within the Chinese Embassy
as Polish and Lithuanian troops committed unspeakable atrocities for nearly a month across the city.
The incidents were also documented by Jewish soldiers serving in the Commonwealth army,
who commented on the inhuman cruelty of the Christians and tried to keep their own hands clean of the madness.
I've actually been waiting a long time to answer this question.
You shall see (assuming you still read this, christos).
I know you've all become tired of my monster-of-the-week exhibition and long absences between updates.
Now that I have covered a lot of background out of the way so that you have an inkling of the many
unseen threats to humanity outside the Chinese Empire, I can return to the mortals.
As you can see, the Chinese are at a late industrial/early modern state of civilization.
And the important social developments that occur at that stage of growth will be covered now as part of the main story.
I hope you enjoy the upcoming saga and the return of proper updates to the main story begins now.
Bellow The Bottom
A woman and her child sat at an outdoor café table in Dailiang, getting ready to start the day.
“Mommy needs some Arabian coffee before she can start shopping today. What do you want to eat here at the café, darling?”
the woman asked her daughter as she adjusted the brim of her hat while flipping through her menu.
“I want a green tea cake with azuki filling!”
“Of course! Anything for you, pussycat. We’re going to get you a new qipao today too.
Or maybe another a dress. And maybe a hanbok or a yukata, for summer of course.”
The woman called for a waiter to take her order as her daughter looked around.
The café was adorned with posters depicting hideous men and women cowering before the might of the Generalissimo and his police force.
Many of the posters featured bold, white lettering with slogans such as:
“Know Your Caste. Know Your Place.” and “Unions Equate To Barbarism! Uphold Chinese virtues and report suspected union members today!!”
The little girl didn’t know how to read the characters yet, but the way the pictures were drawn,
in harsh whites and blues, scared her and made her think they were bad.
“Mommy, mommy! What do those posters say? They look scary.”
The woman looked at the posters, nodded in approval of its content, and adjusted her fur boa.
At this moment, the coffee along with the cake had arrived, brimming with sugary goodness.
“Oh darling, go eat your cake. Let Mommy and Daddy worry about it, mm?” she said as she got up for a minute.
“Mommy’s going to use the restroom for a moment. Do be a good girl while I’m gone, alright?” she smiled as she left.
Left to her own devices, the little girl started eating.
The waiter came back with some crayons and paper and fairly soon, she was absorbed within her coloring. Until she heard it.
“Hi. Miss?” a voice called out from behind the little girl.
As she turned it around, she saw a little boy, not that much older than herself, holding out a cap, begging for money.
“Please…I’m hungry and I just need a few yuan to go down the street and buy a mantou.”
The contrast between the two of them couldn’t be more pronounced.
The boy wore a ragged, patchwork jacket with worn-out trousers and shoes.
Prim and proper in her lacy forest-green Eastern style dress and well-kept appearance, she looked like she was worlds removed from him.
She felt very sorry for him. He looked like he had never eaten good food before. So she broke her green tea cake in half and gave one to him.
“I’m saving up for a doll I wanted.“ she beamed. “But you can have half my cake!”
His eyes widened at the sight of it. “Really?”
As soon as he took the piece in hand, the girl was yanked backwards by a tall,
flustered woman who appeared utterly disgusted by the sight of him.
“Darling!! You must get away from that filthy street urchin!” the woman berated her.
“But Mommy, he-” but the little girl was interrupted.
“Pussycat, please do be more careful next time. Don’t talk to the common people on the street.
You never know what kind of muck they’ve been rolling around in. Next time, don’t give them anything.”
her mother said as she snatched up her coffee and hurried her daughter along.
“Put it on my tab, I’ll pay next time,” she called to the waiter. The girl looked back at the street urchin,
ribbons in her hair trailing in the wind, before her mother hustled her back into their private vehicle.
She was kind, he thought, not like most people he had solicited, as he was shooed away by the café manager.
In the safety of a back alley, he looked down at the green tea cake.
Without thinking, he stuffed it into his mouth whole and cried while chewing.
It wasn’t even the fact that the cake was so good.
It was that he hadn’t eaten solid food in days and that he was supposed to find food for his parents and brother.
And here he was, chewing and chewing, and not stopping.
And now it laid in his belly, heavy as a rock; a cruel reminder of what he had done.
He hurried back to his family’s shack further down the way.
“Big brother, did you find any food?” a younger boy called out as he approached, jumping off of a trash can.
“No.” he lied. “No one would give me any.”
“We need to tell Mother then.” the boy said, dispirited.
The two boys soon made their way to the shack, where their mother was boiling a stew.
That would actually be a stretch. She was stretching the stew that was mostly water, bits of cabbage and strained soy sauce at this point.
Their mother was slender but very weathered, appearing slightly older for her age, no doubt from the stress.
“We couldn’t get any food, Mother. I was only able to collect twenty Yuan.”
the older child said with his face downcast as he handed his mother the coins.
“It’s been hard for all of us,” she said stoically. “Since your father’s been fired from the ironworks.
That’s why I need you two boys to help more. We wouldn’t ask this of you if things weren’t so hard.”
“Mother, why won’t the factory owners let him go back to work?” her youngest son asked.
“I…”
Her husband had been blacklisted by Huang Ge Tie Corporation for being suspected of unionizing.
Not only was he barred from working in the iron industry again, but he was barred from all other professions as well.
He was out looking for work today, but she knew better than to get her hopes up.
She had heard that across the sea, in Wa Province cities like Shanghai and Kyoto,
that the government was moving much of its production base there, where unions hadn’t sprang up. Yet.
She was scared though, that her husband was keeping secrets from her.
That he actually had joined a union and that he had doomed them all to poverty and starvation.
“Mother. Tell us that Father will find a job. Tell us it’s going to be okay. Please.” her children began tugging on her leg.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be okay.”
The State of the Most Important Nations of the 1500s
The Chinese Empire
Link to video.
Over the course of two centuries, the Xia Emperors and Empresses had grown weaker and weaker, with the re-introduction of imperial polygamy.
The Chinese Empire while still powerful and prestigious, lacked the leadership of the Xia Emperors and instead, fell under the control of a capitalist junta.
The capitalist junta kept the royals in Louyang complacent by supplying the harems with beautiful men and women extracted from all corners of the Empire.
They were instructed to distract them from governing and fulfill their every desire so as to cement the junta’s control over governing affairs.
The current head of the central government, although not official, was the Generalissimo, Liu Zhonghai, ruling from the effective capital of Huiji.
Generalissimo Liu Zhonghai held a complete stranglehold on the Chinese political process.
He had extensive and powerful support from varied groups like Core Chinese corporate trusts, corrupt governors, the Chaoxian bureaucracy and Yamato zaibatsu families.
Together with their allies and supporters, they controlled almost up to 72% of the wealth in Imperial China.
The majority of these shareholders were of the Nao Caste, but of the mercantile varieties and not the scholarly,
while the majority of the poor and destitute were Li Caste laborers, setting the stage for both class and Caste warfare.
During this period, Lin Dehuai, the Commander of the Motherland Defense Army, distanced himself from the Generalissimo.
Within private circles, he was known to abhor the Generalissimo’s policies and refused to carry out his directives to massacre the poor and oppress the workers.
He cleverly sidestepped them by justifying that the bulk of the Army had to be relocated north,
on the Manchurian frontier to monitor Polish-Lithuanian military activity against Tartar rebels.
With a large portion of the Empire’s industrial base under his control, he was able to effectively hinder the Generalissimo’s arms production
as the firearms trust in Core China was suffering from a rash of worker strikes.
Lin Dehuai and the MDA had effectively seceded from the Chinese Empire, governing the Northern territories and northern Chaoxian as its own independent state.
He and his men were still loyal to the royal Xia family however and did not consider themselves separate from the Empire,
but the last time an imperial edict had come out of the city of Louyang was over fifty years ago.
Efforts have been made to contact the Imperial Xia in Louyang but they have all ended in failure.
The Generalissimo could not count on the armies stationed in former Aryan and Vajra territory to return to homeland and give him the option
to either initiate civil war with Lin Dehuai or quell the upstart Li Caste populations as they had their hands full in stabilizing the conquered territories.
New factories were raised in Kyushu and Honshu in response, and private armies,
blurring the line between police, military and mercenary were raised as an alternative to carry out the will of the Generalissimo and his allies, primarily in busting unions and spying on worker rallies.
The capitalist junta did have one more ace up their sleeve however, as the bulk of the Tortoise Armada, the Chinese naval forces, were aligned with the Generalissimo.
With the ability to restrict the flow of supplies and control sea traffic, it made the political situation in the Empire even more tense.
Judeo-Babylon
Meanwhile, in Judeo-Babylon, the second-greatest empire in the world began to undego changes of its own.
Queen Rebecca Khalid-Zuckerburg, also nicknamed “The Virgin Queen”, ascends to the Judeo-Babylonian throne at the tender age of fifteen.
The young queen was very popular amongst the Jewish and Babylonian population as she personified hope and optimism with her youth.
One of her first edicts as Queen was to raise investigative councils in Hevron.
Hevron, the Jewish Holy City, also held the dubious honor of the murder capital of the world.
It was primarily here and in other Judeo-Babylonian cities that a strange, almost ritualized kind of murder where the victim was completely drained of blood happened with alarming frequency.
She succeeded in regulating the wealthy landlords in the populated urban centers and forced them to lower rents,
as Judeo-Babylon had been suffering from intense rioting over unsustainable living costs in the cities.
She also attempted to reform the military structure of the declining empire by incorporating and importing rifled firearms and gunpowder artillery,
which were being developed in Austro-Hungary; a Judeo-Babylonian ally, independently of the Chinese Empire.
Her reforms were met with fierce opposition by General James Bernstein and his clique of conservatives,
who held a chokehold on a vast portion of the saltpeter supply in Judeo-Babylon.
It was rumored that General Bernstein was planning a coup d’état against the Virgin Queen.
The Dual Kingdom of Austro-Hungary
The Dual Kingdom of Austro-Hungary was not always the esteemed scientific nexus of the Western world.
Their early history was tribal, with the Austrians being closely related to the Saxon peoples,
but at a certain point, they became one family with the Hungarians who arrived from the east.
The Dual Kingdom, second to Judeo-Babylon, is perhaps the most loved Hamitic nation for their success.
The country is prosperous and enjoys a military and marriage alliance with Abydos as well as good relations all around with all of its neighbors, save for De Guo (Saxony).
The first Austro-Hungarian developments were a result of espionage carried out across the border into the Chinese territory of De Guo (Saxony).
They were able to reverse engineer Chinese muskets for their own purposes and from there, spurring an increased emphasis on science and mathematics,
Austro-Hungarian engineers and scientists were able to introduce a wealth of innovations into daily life.
The Chinese Empire has imposed trade embargos and closed the border between De Guo and Austro-Hungary in response,
but the spirit of innovation remains strong in the small country and they possess an enviable status amongst Japhethic countries.
They are technologically on par with the mighty Chinese Empire, and are widely thought to be able to stand a chance against the invincible Imperials in pitched battle.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth possesses and flaunts the greatest military power Aozhou has ever seen.
Along with Iberia, they dominate much of the Varangian population and exploit them to their own ends.
They have also been known to exert much influence on the little state of Mycenae,
where it is expected they will achieve a formal takeover in the coming years.
Their increasing domination of Tartar lands is also becoming nearly complete.
This aggressive, expansive foreign policy must be explained with some background.
The Polish-Lithuanians were odd amongst their Hamitic neighbors for the adoption of Christianity,
a religion originating from Arabia, which is now a Chinese province.
Although Polish-Lithuanian Christians had denounced Arabic Christianity for aligning with China, they continued to follow its tenets in a new form.
Ultra-Orthodox Christianity was born in the Commonwealth Motherlands and its extreme, reactionary nature influenced many aspects of Commonwealth culture.
The Polish-Lithuanians still considered themselves Hamitic peoples, but believed their neighbors were too
soft and feminine to stand up to the Chinese Empire; particularly the Saxons,
whom they denounced as whores and half-men for their association with the Han.
They rejected the Chinese terms for their race; Pink was the byword for Far Western, Oceanian and Meizhou peoples; a lowly and feminine color unfit to represent them.
“Aozhou peoples” was also unacceptable to them; because to accept the Chinese terminology as the lingua franca robbed them of their pride.
Polish Master Race, or PMR, became the accepted standard amongst nationalistic Polish-Lithuanians.
All of these factors led to a dangerous mixture that was highly nationalistic, chauvinistic and religious, all in one.
This ideology became known as the White Terror.
The Sejm (the governing parliament of the Commonwealth) had waged four successive wars across several centuries against the Grand Khanate,
slowly occupying and mincing the nomadic confederation into piecemeal over time.
Even before White Terror ideology became the standard, successive Sejms dreamed of being the Hand of God to bring ruin to the heathen Chinese.
The Tartars of the Grand Khanate, being close to the Han in both race and proximity, were seen as a stepping stone.
However, on the advent of their fifth invasion, they were not satisfied with the slow progress of the occupation,
and were greatly embarrassed by their failure to make any meaningful advances into the veritable rebel seas.
New commanders and officers in Tartar lands were thus given the Postal Directive from the Sejm.
The Polish-Lithuanians were to systematically rape and massacre their way through the Grand Khanate,
and often used rape indiscriminately to placate populations, although it was already prevalent enough in past wars.
The Postal Directive only made rebel Tartar groups fight harder. It had a number of other side effects though.
By the mid 1500s, it is estimated that nearly half of the Tartar population was born through rape and possessed either a Polish or Lithuanian fatherhood.
The most notable incident, known as “The Rape of Sarai” was documented by a Dr. Zhou Kang and Madam Xu,
who helped provide refuge to almost twenty-five thousand Tartars within the Chinese Embassy
as Polish and Lithuanian troops committed unspeakable atrocities for nearly a month across the city.
The incidents were also documented by Jewish soldiers serving in the Commonwealth army,
who commented on the inhuman cruelty of the Christians and tried to keep their own hands clean of the madness.
I've actually been waiting a long time to answer this question.
You shall see (assuming you still read this, christos).
mykeedee
Warlord
So many updates!!! 
Tomorrow's Dawn
Heroes Never Die
An island of haze, adorned with neon glitter, drifted idly the sea of night by as the clouds overhead shuddered in anticipation.
Such was the visage of Tokyo by night. Down in the endless warrens of Tokyos underbelly, one lone man looked nervously at the door in front of him.
It was the right place.
An eye peeked out from behind the slit to greet him.
Youre not a cop. the voice on the other side remarked.
How could you tell? he asked.
Youre not fat enough. the voice answered as the door came unlocked.
The voice was right. He had been losing weight recently.
Standing at the door was a lean looking man with a thin mustache.
Come on in. Ill get you something to eat. He paused. You got family?
The man nodded as he moved through the door while the sentry locked the door behind them.
Well. We try to live up to our own standards, so you can have more than one.
It wont be enough if you have a big family, but what we can spare should be enough to feed maybe a wife and a kid.
Is that enough? he handed him a few mantou from a nearby basket, perched atop a counter.
Thank you.
Whats your name?
Ru Haozi.
Come on, lets walk. Its a little further down. Howd you hear about the movement?
One of my friends from my old job at the ironworks, Xiao Hui told me about this place.
Said it was a place I should go see for myself, especially now that Im- he stopped himself as the shame welled up in his face.
What is it, Mr. Ru? Fired? Disgraced? Or blacklisted, right? Almost all of us are. You, and I-
He put a hand on his back as they made their way through the hallway.
-And the whole of the proletariat. Were all with you.
A huge throng of men stood in general assembly, staring down at a single man in the center of the room.
Well-dressed in an three-piece Eastern suit, the central figure gazed solemnly at the huddled masses of the poor before him.
He looked as if he had finished speaking and was drinking from a glass of water, but he soon put it down and cleared his throat.
Thats the Speaker. Mr. Fan Zhen. the sentry explained.
The leader of this humble movement. Take a listen. he suggested as he left to return to his post.
Mr. Fan lifted his face and stared at his audience, taking one good look before he opened his mouth to speak.
You have heard me talk about the bourgeois before, but you may wonder, who are the bourgeois?
They are the men who control your jobs, where you can go, what you can do, the ones who profit from your hard work.
The capitalists. The landlords. The governors. Wealthy dukes of industry and banking. They are the bourgeois.
They will make excuses to justify their methodology.
How the wages they pay you are set, to support their necessary functions as job creators.
Or that social order as we know it will collapse and descend into barbarism if it were not for them.
They will tell you that you exist in your impoverished state because it is your own fault and that perhaps you were not working hard enough.
They will appeal to tradition. That you are a Li Caste laborer and that you should accept your lot in life.
And that trying to break away from your destiny will bring shame to your family name.
What they all have in common is that theyre just tools. Designed to absolve them of any sense of culpability.
Although the Mr. Fan appeared calm and collected, hints of anger tinged his voice.
I want to tell you a story. Its actually not my story; I claim no ownership over it.
But I would like to tell it to you anyway because its one that I know, will be close to many of the hearts gathered here today.
There was a once a man. He, just like many of you, was a poor urban dweller with a family to feed.
No matter how hard he worked, he could never earn enough to feed every mouth.
So his wife had to take up a life of prostitution to support their family as he struggled to earn a meager living.
Their children were left to waste away or beg for scraps in the streets.
She came down with the whores disease after a time and could no longer work, confined to her creaky bed;
covered only with meager sheets, until she died one cold winter with no one by her side.
One night, many moons later, the husband tried to pilfer the throwaways from the backdoor of an upscale bakery.
The bakers caught him, and beat the man to death as if he were a gutter rat, undeserving of even their trash.
He died an ignominious death, stealing stale mantou just to try to feed the children he had left for one more day.
The remaining children died one by one of malnourishment, left stranded in a world without guidance. Only one remained.
That survivor told me his story. Its a story similar to all of yours.
The story of the proletariat; the working poor.
Struggling to survive one more day, trying to keep families warm and fed.
Where the difference between being employed and unemployed is marginal.
Whether you live or die, is inconsequential to the bourgeois
because your worth as a human being is worth less than the products you produce.
Too many lives like this play out as tragedies. Its unnecessary.
When I was a young man, I attended Tokyo University. I am a Nao Caste scholar.
Most of my classmates were Nao Caste princelings and princesses;
sons & daughters of the Nao Caste merchants who benefitted disproportionately from the advent of modern industry.
During my years as a student, I had been to many events, parties, banquets, galas;
enough to know that behind closed doors, the bourgeois sate themselves with unearned luxury
and conspire to innovate and improve on the mechanisms of your oppression.
I kept many of the things I saw and heard to myself, but I never forgot them.
When I first stepped into Tokyo University, my only thought was to graduate and get a good career, so I could maintain a good standard of living.
When I graduated, I became consumed with purpose, to weave anew the tapestry of our society.
To make a future where the Castes are truly equal!"
The rising of Mr. Fans voice rapidly reached its zenith, a fiery passion now making its presence clear in the anger of his words.
What gives the bourgeois the right? They have no Mandate!
Their power comes from the control they exert over our lives, the fear they instill in our minds!
So we must cast off the yoke and re-assert ourselves as human beings!
The cancer that has grown at the heights of our government, Liu Zhong, and his clique of governors and businessmen, must be removed, cut out by force.
Ownership of the industries should rightfully be put into the collective hands of the workers!
The separation of corporate interest and the state should be put into place.
And the elected should be civil servants in the truest sense of the word, bound to serve the will of the people!
We can only do this if we conjoin our efforts.
Many of you have either been in a union or were afraid to join one.
This movement, our movement, is not like them.
Our movement, one of vision, and one of egalitarianism, will not fail like the ones that come before.
Because those unions were all specific to their industries and lacked the drive to strike at the source of their oppression.
We, the socialists, wish to combine the might of ALL workers, to achieve the overthrow of Liu Zhong's regime.
If we stand together, we shall not falter.
Workers of the world!!"
"Unite.
Tears streaming from his eyes, Ru Haozi could not help but join in as the roaring applause drowned out all other sounds.
Such was the visage of Tokyo by night. Down in the endless warrens of Tokyos underbelly, one lone man looked nervously at the door in front of him.
It was the right place.
An eye peeked out from behind the slit to greet him.
Youre not a cop. the voice on the other side remarked.
How could you tell? he asked.
Youre not fat enough. the voice answered as the door came unlocked.
The voice was right. He had been losing weight recently.
Standing at the door was a lean looking man with a thin mustache.
Come on in. Ill get you something to eat. He paused. You got family?
The man nodded as he moved through the door while the sentry locked the door behind them.
Well. We try to live up to our own standards, so you can have more than one.
It wont be enough if you have a big family, but what we can spare should be enough to feed maybe a wife and a kid.
Is that enough? he handed him a few mantou from a nearby basket, perched atop a counter.
Thank you.
Whats your name?
Ru Haozi.
Come on, lets walk. Its a little further down. Howd you hear about the movement?
One of my friends from my old job at the ironworks, Xiao Hui told me about this place.
Said it was a place I should go see for myself, especially now that Im- he stopped himself as the shame welled up in his face.
What is it, Mr. Ru? Fired? Disgraced? Or blacklisted, right? Almost all of us are. You, and I-
He put a hand on his back as they made their way through the hallway.
-And the whole of the proletariat. Were all with you.
A huge throng of men stood in general assembly, staring down at a single man in the center of the room.
Well-dressed in an three-piece Eastern suit, the central figure gazed solemnly at the huddled masses of the poor before him.
He looked as if he had finished speaking and was drinking from a glass of water, but he soon put it down and cleared his throat.
Thats the Speaker. Mr. Fan Zhen. the sentry explained.
The leader of this humble movement. Take a listen. he suggested as he left to return to his post.
Mr. Fan lifted his face and stared at his audience, taking one good look before he opened his mouth to speak.
You have heard me talk about the bourgeois before, but you may wonder, who are the bourgeois?
They are the men who control your jobs, where you can go, what you can do, the ones who profit from your hard work.
The capitalists. The landlords. The governors. Wealthy dukes of industry and banking. They are the bourgeois.
They will make excuses to justify their methodology.
How the wages they pay you are set, to support their necessary functions as job creators.
Or that social order as we know it will collapse and descend into barbarism if it were not for them.
They will tell you that you exist in your impoverished state because it is your own fault and that perhaps you were not working hard enough.
They will appeal to tradition. That you are a Li Caste laborer and that you should accept your lot in life.
And that trying to break away from your destiny will bring shame to your family name.
What they all have in common is that theyre just tools. Designed to absolve them of any sense of culpability.
Although the Mr. Fan appeared calm and collected, hints of anger tinged his voice.
I want to tell you a story. Its actually not my story; I claim no ownership over it.
But I would like to tell it to you anyway because its one that I know, will be close to many of the hearts gathered here today.
There was a once a man. He, just like many of you, was a poor urban dweller with a family to feed.
No matter how hard he worked, he could never earn enough to feed every mouth.
So his wife had to take up a life of prostitution to support their family as he struggled to earn a meager living.
Their children were left to waste away or beg for scraps in the streets.
She came down with the whores disease after a time and could no longer work, confined to her creaky bed;
covered only with meager sheets, until she died one cold winter with no one by her side.
One night, many moons later, the husband tried to pilfer the throwaways from the backdoor of an upscale bakery.
The bakers caught him, and beat the man to death as if he were a gutter rat, undeserving of even their trash.
He died an ignominious death, stealing stale mantou just to try to feed the children he had left for one more day.
The remaining children died one by one of malnourishment, left stranded in a world without guidance. Only one remained.
That survivor told me his story. Its a story similar to all of yours.
The story of the proletariat; the working poor.
Struggling to survive one more day, trying to keep families warm and fed.
Where the difference between being employed and unemployed is marginal.
Whether you live or die, is inconsequential to the bourgeois
because your worth as a human being is worth less than the products you produce.
Too many lives like this play out as tragedies. Its unnecessary.
When I was a young man, I attended Tokyo University. I am a Nao Caste scholar.
Most of my classmates were Nao Caste princelings and princesses;
sons & daughters of the Nao Caste merchants who benefitted disproportionately from the advent of modern industry.
During my years as a student, I had been to many events, parties, banquets, galas;
enough to know that behind closed doors, the bourgeois sate themselves with unearned luxury
and conspire to innovate and improve on the mechanisms of your oppression.
I kept many of the things I saw and heard to myself, but I never forgot them.
When I first stepped into Tokyo University, my only thought was to graduate and get a good career, so I could maintain a good standard of living.
When I graduated, I became consumed with purpose, to weave anew the tapestry of our society.
To make a future where the Castes are truly equal!"
The rising of Mr. Fans voice rapidly reached its zenith, a fiery passion now making its presence clear in the anger of his words.
What gives the bourgeois the right? They have no Mandate!
Their power comes from the control they exert over our lives, the fear they instill in our minds!
So we must cast off the yoke and re-assert ourselves as human beings!
The cancer that has grown at the heights of our government, Liu Zhong, and his clique of governors and businessmen, must be removed, cut out by force.
Ownership of the industries should rightfully be put into the collective hands of the workers!
The separation of corporate interest and the state should be put into place.
And the elected should be civil servants in the truest sense of the word, bound to serve the will of the people!
We can only do this if we conjoin our efforts.
Many of you have either been in a union or were afraid to join one.
This movement, our movement, is not like them.
Our movement, one of vision, and one of egalitarianism, will not fail like the ones that come before.
Because those unions were all specific to their industries and lacked the drive to strike at the source of their oppression.
We, the socialists, wish to combine the might of ALL workers, to achieve the overthrow of Liu Zhong's regime.
If we stand together, we shall not falter.
Workers of the world!!"
"Unite.
Tears streaming from his eyes, Ru Haozi could not help but join in as the roaring applause drowned out all other sounds.
TheMistborn
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2013
- Messages
- 25
From a longtime lurker: this is one of the best stories on this site. The writing is superb, and the story more so (if possible). Great to see this updated again.
baseballpie
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2012
- Messages
- 2,092
I just have to say, this is amazing.
Tomorrow's Dawn
Heroes Never Die
Hello everyone, it's been awhile now. I've finally taken some time to address this.
Unfortunately, this is not a narrative update (I have the next one on hand,
half-written) but I think a lot of you have noticed that I've stopped
updating this story as well as my other one (Dawn of the Punic Sea)
for quite some time now. I haven't completely abandoned them as
I still spend time browsing CFC and I mainly spend time in the DoC subforum
nowadays; well, to be more accurate, I haven't abandoned these stories
in my thoughts that is. I still very much think of this story primarily from time to time.
I had many plans in store for this story, including
compiling a .pdf of this for personal viewing when it was to be concluded.
In fact, I already planned The Celestial Bureaucracy from beginning to end from the story's inception.
All the story arcs are already in place either in writing or in my head with their general structures in solid standing,
and I still have all the saves and photos on hand, so no fudging here;
I keep very good records and backups on everything, even the compatible
GEM version on which it was played on (which can no longer be downloaded AFAIK).
Having notes and thoughts on how the story progresses is one thing. Executing it is another.
I don't want this story to stop at a dead end with no closure;
neither do I want to make empty promises I can't keep.
Part of the reason why I haven't been updating is because of a shift in focus
towards my education. I took my earlier university years when I first started
writing this at leisure but now I've experienced a paradigm shift towards
taking it a lot more seriously. The remainder of my spare time is actually
being spent trying to flesh out a webcomic idea that I have; those of you who
know me in the Civ4 S&T Group know I'm pursuing illustration as a career. Pertaining to this project, I wanted to merge my interest (writing)
with my future lifeblood (drawing), at least just to get some work out there, and hopefully before I graduate.
Originally, I thought of passing on all my notes to another competent and willing author; initially,
I considered Tycho, whom I actually collaborated with extensively during the peak of our respective stories' activity,
but Tycho hasn't been around and there has been a drought in authors for some time,
and the amount of writing that would need to be done to finish this would be too much of a burden to ask someone else to shoulder.
I address you all with the knowledge that this subforum has seen its share of
abandoned and orphaned stories with great promise. And something that I
personally can relate to as well, considering my favorite Civ4 AAR of all time,
Let's Play Civilization 4 by Zoolooman, found on the Let's Play Archive was never
finished as well. And I know well how many people bemoaned the perpetual purgatory that was the fate of the next PotU update.
I hope it isn't too, Terrance.
In short, I don't wish to subject those that have enjoyed this to a milder version of Tantalus' plight.
If anyone still keeps up with this, I'd like to hear your thoughts on how to proceed.
The most obvious thing to do would just be to finish the half-written update,
and leave it as the final update, which is my least desired course of action.
The thing I want to do most is to continue through the story and deliver
the meteoric ending I always wanted to build up towards,
but it seems to be the least possible at the moment, given my workload and schedule.
I could basically summarize what happens from here until the end,
but that would obviously suck out a lot of the potential drama and emotion
of what I always intended to write.
If anything though, I just don't want to leave anyone hanging on a perpetual cliffhanger.
There's got to be a next page right?
Unfortunately, this is not a narrative update (I have the next one on hand,
half-written) but I think a lot of you have noticed that I've stopped
updating this story as well as my other one (Dawn of the Punic Sea)
for quite some time now. I haven't completely abandoned them as
I still spend time browsing CFC and I mainly spend time in the DoC subforum
nowadays; well, to be more accurate, I haven't abandoned these stories
in my thoughts that is. I still very much think of this story primarily from time to time.
I had many plans in store for this story, including
compiling a .pdf of this for personal viewing when it was to be concluded.
In fact, I already planned The Celestial Bureaucracy from beginning to end from the story's inception.
All the story arcs are already in place either in writing or in my head with their general structures in solid standing,
and I still have all the saves and photos on hand, so no fudging here;
I keep very good records and backups on everything, even the compatible
GEM version on which it was played on (which can no longer be downloaded AFAIK).
Having notes and thoughts on how the story progresses is one thing. Executing it is another.
I don't want this story to stop at a dead end with no closure;
neither do I want to make empty promises I can't keep.
Part of the reason why I haven't been updating is because of a shift in focus
towards my education. I took my earlier university years when I first started
writing this at leisure but now I've experienced a paradigm shift towards
taking it a lot more seriously. The remainder of my spare time is actually
being spent trying to flesh out a webcomic idea that I have; those of you who
know me in the Civ4 S&T Group know I'm pursuing illustration as a career. Pertaining to this project, I wanted to merge my interest (writing)
with my future lifeblood (drawing), at least just to get some work out there, and hopefully before I graduate.
Originally, I thought of passing on all my notes to another competent and willing author; initially,
I considered Tycho, whom I actually collaborated with extensively during the peak of our respective stories' activity,
but Tycho hasn't been around and there has been a drought in authors for some time,
and the amount of writing that would need to be done to finish this would be too much of a burden to ask someone else to shoulder.
I address you all with the knowledge that this subforum has seen its share of
abandoned and orphaned stories with great promise. And something that I
personally can relate to as well, considering my favorite Civ4 AAR of all time,
Let's Play Civilization 4 by Zoolooman, found on the Let's Play Archive was never
finished as well. And I know well how many people bemoaned the perpetual purgatory that was the fate of the next PotU update.
I hope it isn't too, Terrance.
In short, I don't wish to subject those that have enjoyed this to a milder version of Tantalus' plight.
If anyone still keeps up with this, I'd like to hear your thoughts on how to proceed.
The most obvious thing to do would just be to finish the half-written update,
and leave it as the final update, which is my least desired course of action.
The thing I want to do most is to continue through the story and deliver
the meteoric ending I always wanted to build up towards,
but it seems to be the least possible at the moment, given my workload and schedule.
I could basically summarize what happens from here until the end,
but that would obviously suck out a lot of the potential drama and emotion
of what I always intended to write.
If anything though, I just don't want to leave anyone hanging on a perpetual cliffhanger.
There's got to be a next page right?
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2010
- Messages
- 8,873
I've fallen behind on updates, but I have been planning to catch up for sometime, so I'm probably not the best person to ask for how to proceed. But my $0.02 says that I'd be happy to wait the wait, it's amazing stuff and I don't care if I have to wait 5+ years, I just want to see it in it's full glory.
I've fallen behind on updates, but I have been planning to catch up for sometime, so I'm probably not the best person to ask for how to proceed. But my $0.02 says that I'd be happy to wait the wait, it's amazing stuff and I don't care if I have to wait 5+ years, I just want to see it in it's full glory.
I agree, however long we have to wait, we'll do it. We're no strangers at S&T to long waits between updates.
Sataa3a
Chieftain
This story is the reason I joined these forums, actually. I wanted to thank you for writing such awesomeness, but every time I thought of doing so, the story had been un-updated for so long it seemed awkward. So thank you, now. This story is great. And if my vote counts for anything, I'd also like to see it finished, no matter how long it takes.
baseballpie
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2012
- Messages
- 2,092
I fourth that movement.
mayor
Heart & Mind
Don't you dare quit on us! (and if you do just leave us in thinking it will be updated some day 
)
In all seriousness, I would be bumbed out if your story died. Just let us wait till you feel you can update again, no matter the length between updates
)In all seriousness, I would be bumbed out if your story died. Just let us wait till you feel you can update again, no matter the length between updates
constantinople
not Istanbul
We can wait and so can the bureaucracy.
Do whatever works best for your schedule.
Do whatever works best for your schedule.
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