[h3][color=87CEFA]Orugoru[/color][/h3]
Some indefinable gloom had taken up to shroud everything, casting its shadow through the wide arc of the window behind the future king's seat, as though the treacherous snow-capped mountaintops that focused the light of the planet's distant sun into bright daylight within Illyuss had somehow been re-positioned, or smudged with the brown haze of smoke that shrouded much of the denser and more industrious portions of the mainland. The light of the brilliant chandeliers hanging overhead seemed brighter than usual, almost harsh, but somehow that only deepened the gloom. 

Orugoru discovered now an odd, accidental echo of memory, a new harmonic resonance inside his head, when he looked at the curving view wall that threw into silhouette the sovereign's empty, single large chair. Orugoru had positioned himself within the doorway of the grandiose meeting chamber, hands clasped behind his back, gazing out upon the smoke-hazed morning. He'd turned and finally approached Prothos, the closest of gods to him, mirroring his stance. Gently, he laid a hand on the god's shoulder, and a hint of frown fleeted over his face at how frail seemed the little flesh and bone he had in comparison to the plump, brine-enriched mass beneath the tunic. 

[color=87CEFA]"Greetings, brother,"[/color] Orugoru said slowly, his energy wrought from another sleepless night.

---

[h3][color=87CEFA]Henrūda[/color][/h3]
They had finally arrived in Ishikara: glittering, beautiful Ishikara, where neat buildings and grand estates reside in the shadow of the imperial palace, with its lime-tree avenues, its shimmering lakes and fountains, its exquisitely tended topiary. The road from Doitsu, a day's journey, was lit by overhanging oil lamps, for the poor in the capital use tallow candles, and the smoke from the tallow manufactures hangs over the city like a death shroud, dirtying the skin and choking the lungs. Dressed in rags, their backs hunched either with the weight of their physical burden or of mental sorrow, the poor people of Doitsu creep through streets that never seem to get light. 

The streets stream with open sewers, where mud and human effluent flow freely, coating the legs of those who carry delegates' sedan chairs as they pass through, staring wide-eyed out the windows much like the aforementioned travelers. On the way they passed figures in the fields, shrouded in mist like ghosts. These barefooted peasants tended noble land and starved if the crop is bad, virtual slaves of the landowners. 

It was of almost no surprise then that on a hillside overlooking a tiny village outside the imperial homestead, three land-workers wearing leather jerkins laughed and joked, and then, on the count of three, heaved a gallows onto a low wooden platform. One of the men placed a three-legged stool beneath the gallows, then bent to help his two companions as they went to work hammering in the struts that would keep the gallows in place, the rhythmic knock-knock carried on the wind where the travelers sat on their horses, beautiful and calm geldings. 

At the bottom of the hill was a village. It was a tiny village, more like a cluster of disconsolate shacks and a tavern that had been scattered around along the perimeter of a brown and muddy square, but it was a village all the same. A freezing rain had eased to a steady and just-as-freezing drizzle and a fierce, bone-chilling wind uncommon in such southeasterly settlements. The villagers waiting in the square wrapped shawls tightly around themselves, clasping shirts at their necks as they awaited the day's entertainment - a hanging. What could be better? Nothing like a good hanging to raise the spirits when the frost had killed much of the previous year's crops and the local landowner was raising his rents and the emperor in Ishikara had new taxes he hoped to enforce.