[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/p6PPXJq.jpg[/img]
[h2][color=red][b]The Imperium of Hiron[/b][/color][/h2][/center]

[b][u]The Emperor's Hidden Arm: Ever Vigilant[/u][/b]

Something that Continentals knew little of the Imperium of Hiron, save for the Violette which had been primarily exposed to a single blunder by the Hidden Arm, was that the Hironese were well accustomed to espionage and working in the shadows. From the mythical days of the "ninja," all the way back to almost prehistory, to the very end of the Sengoku Era, the Hironese had fought one other both in the light of day as well as the silence of night. Subterfuge and trickery was a finely honed craft, one that the Imperium had been making use of since its inception.

The tool of this subterfuge?

The Emperor's Hidden Arm.

Officially, the organization was primarily concerned with the internal security of the Imperium, identifying dissidents, traitors, and threats. It did have the secondary job of external surveillance, but the very depths to which it would go were almost evil. Of course, all of this is vehemently denied by the Imperium. Torture, assassination, sabotage, all of these things were clearly not condoned by the Imperium. The Emperor would never order such a thing, which is why the Director of the Hidden Arm, Hashi Takami, barely raised his eyebrows when he went over the most recent order from the Emperor. It was an order to enact [i]Operation Dying Light[/i] (translated from Hironese).

Hashi took a long look at the document before deciding how to delegate this to his underlings. It would take quite a bit of manpower and work, but the Hidden Arm would certainly get it done in due time. Overall though, the operation was a surprising change in targets considering their prior work against Violette. Apparently the Emperor was more interested in targets such as Meung these days. Hashi shrugged, and got to work on the operation.

The agents that would be used would have graduated from the Hidden Arm Espionage Academy, a clandestine building situated in Senryu, disguised as a tea shop in the front, while primarily constructed underground. Its agents were almost unparalleled in the entire world, having been taught everything the Hironese knew about espionage including multiple languages, and they were chosen from the cream of the crop of Hironese people. Physical training, mental fortitude, scholarly capability. It was all important, especially considering they often operated in very small groups or even alone, knowing only exactly what was needed to accomplish the mission. 

Compartmentalization was absolutely key to information security in the event one of the agents was compromised. Each agent was also incredibly loyal to the cause, almost always willing to commit suicide rather than be captured and interrogated unless they reasonably believed escape was plausible. The Hidden Arm was rather unprecedented amongst Hironese society in that it fully accepted and made use of women for its purposes, even instructing them as full agents. The organization also had a habit of using intermediaries who were entirely not Hironese in the process of executing operations overseas, knowing money could win out over any other motive and that other countries might attempt to look for specifically Hironese people to persecute as spies if worse came to worse as it did with the Veletians.

[b][u]A Field Gun for an Imperium[/u][/b]

While Imperial Arms was quite possibly one of the top arms companies in the world, well, probably the best in Settumu anyway, the same could not be said for the Imperium's field gun companies. Whilst the Imperium made use of a decade old field gun design, the Continentals pushed onwards as ever. In order to rectify this problem, or attempt rectification, the Emperor decided to announce a design competition between the three field gun companies within the Imperium; Eastern Inventions, Ironsides and Cannons, and Leonardo's Sons. Each was approximately the same level of crap, but when representatives of the three gathered, they were optimistic about the design specifications ordered by the Emperor himself. If one of the companies could successfully design such a field gun, it might be capable of surpassing the Continentals in much the same way that the Model 1 had surpassed them...