What could have been
“It is ironic, that descendents of the Chosen, who served loyally King Jingxi I and the Emperors of the Han Dynasty, now rule China.” –Pang Mingzu, Tieh Dynasty scholar
History is as always, what determines the present. If the arrow that struck down Jingxi at Koyahan had been blown off course by divine grace, a small minor change in the fabric of time, history would have been changed impossibly. Emperor Wu would not have died of a heart attack, and with Jingxi still alive, he would have unleashed the might of China upon her enemies and without a doubt have crushed Choson and her ally.
Choson would have been incorporated into the Han Empire of China, to become another province in the vast Empire their culture and ways to be slowly mixed with those of the Chinese. The Chosen would have been nothing more then the Lords of Choson, yet how history had been different. Jingxi had been struck down at Koyahan, Emperor Wu died, and China withdrew from the war in Choson.
And the Chosen, the loyal followers of Jingxi onto beyond his grave, would leave their home, to the northern untamed lands of what would be called Chosenia. In their service to their Lord the Emperor of China, they would bring civilization to those lands with steel and flames. And when water flowed abundant in the north, granted by the divinity of Emperor Wu, it was a done deal.
The Chosen, for the next 3 centuries, would do her best to guard China’s northern frontier fighting the Turks on their equal terms pitting horse archers against horse archers. The sole difference being that the Chosen were supported by thousands and thousands of foot soldiers. And the Chosen would remain vigilant, and through battle after battle, they would come to earn the grudging respect of the Turks and the Tungus they later came to crush.
Many of those that were defeated by the Chosen fled, but a wise few joined their ranks, for the ever present ancient saying remained. “If you can’t beat them, join them.” And as Han China reached her height of power, stretching from the Ban River all the way to Guangdong, the Chosen prospered. Wealth came to them and their martial prowess increased to be unleashed in the war against Khmeria.
Yet when Han China came toppling down, they remained as always, loyal servants of the Empire. As the Emperor Shuazi, the last Han Emperor, fled from Suzhou with his daughter searching for sanctuary in the lands of the Chosen, his detachment of Chosen bodyguards escorted him north. But it was not to be, he was slain outside Suzhou by the evil heinous Sanghists, Chinese corrupted by the foreign ways of bygone Sinhala. His bodyguards fought to the last man defending his body and his daughter until they too fell under the darkness of death.
History has lost sight of what happened to the last of the Han, but there are rumors that not all of those bodyguards perished. A rumor that one body guardsurvived and brought the daughter of Shuazi to Habing where she in time married the then Duke of Chosen, an ancestor of Taedi, or Emperor Tae. That by that marriage, the blood of Han flowed once more to the blood of the Chosen, and by rite of marriage and by Divine Grace, the Chosen Dynasty of Tae was destined to rule.
And what a mighty Dynasty it is, the glory and splendor of which China had never seen before, with the accomplishment of one single thing. That was the complete conquest of all the steppe nomads, and the conquest of the steppes itself by the Chosen. Those who were defeated either fled west, or surrendered to power of the Chosen armies. Powerful mobile cavalry backed by numerous stalwart infantry, an undefeatable force in the steppes.
The nightmare of Mongke, the leader of the Mongols crushed by Ban Chao centuries ago, had been realized. The steppe, was Chinese. And with that, the might of China’s armies gazed elsewhere, should her armies march against Suzhou, and Hong Kong to bring back the glory of the Empire of Han? Or should she march against Choson to bring the dream of Jingxi back to life?
Or shall she forge a new destiny, unbound by the past…? 
