Yeah, the secret to stopping image shrinkage is to type stuff into the image's cell. This balances them out (if text causes one side to grow then it follows that it'll cause the other side to grow as well). And if you use color code #2E2C2C then it'll be totally invisible against the Guild's background. Alternatively you can place actual relevant information on that side of the sheet. Like I like to put the one-word answer stuff there under the image, like age, gender, profession, maybe a short image caption, that sort of thing. [hider=Dāmaxāriš I, Scourge of the Sons of Hezeret][table][row][cell][/cell][cell][/cell][/row][row][cell][color=aaaaaa]𝕊ome twenty years ago, a man stepped aboard a chariot and rode for a commune in the desert. He wore gold looped around his fingers and stricken through his ears, spun into his beard and the hilt of his sword. He had seen feathers in a dream, feathers like forge-fresh bronze, bright and glowing, which fell from a great wing in the sky. Their heat melted the desert sands into glass, dried up the Silken Sea; rendered the peoples there all to ash. Only an oracle, a witch of Yivir, would know what tragedy this foretold. The king who arrived at this commune was good and gentle. He kept only one wife and loved her as dearly as he loved all the cities' subjects. He danced with them during the many festivals to their gods, and executed the landowners who beat their slaves, and listened carefully to all woes brought to his court. But the king who left—he locked the door to his chamber and let no one else inside, not the girls of his harem, not his servants or stewards. He sent caravans east past Sarsis, and ships deep into the lands of the barbarians, where they searched for the strongest weapons and armors in all the world. He poisoned the teas and soups that his cooks brought to his pregnant wife. He neglected state duties as his empire withered around him. For quoth the oracle: the feathers are sons of a great golden eagle, and the eagle is Ārtammat, and all kings are born of His most sacred lineage. Three feathers fall and the first shall burn the others, burn the land and sea, burn all it sees and touches. Ephaerzes could not bring himself to kill his darling wife, nor to cut her open and scoop the baby from her belly. Not while he loved her still. How she cried; how the sound of it rent his heart! But on the day of the birth she was cast from his palace to live with the beggars. She found a home there, taken in by a kind family with two little ones of their own. Here she raised her boy, the only she would ever bear. The reason for all her suffering and her only reason to live.[/color][/cell][cell][center][sub][h1][color=383636]𒁕𒈠𒀝𒐼𒊑𒅖[/color][/h1][/sub][sup][color=aaaaaa][h1]𝔻āmaxāriš I[/h1] King of All Eshkhep, King of the Nhirians, King of Kings, Lord of the River, Highest Priest of Ārtammat, Steward of the Flame-Eternal[/color][/sup] [img]https://filonoi.gr/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/e1bc80cf80e1bdb8-cf84e1bdb4cebd-cebce1bdb1cf87ceb7-ceb3cebbcf85cf84e1bdbdcebdceb5ceb9-cebae1bdb1cf80cebfceb9cebfcf82.jpg[/img][/center][/cell][/row][/table][table][row][/row][row][cell][color=aaaaaa]Her husband sent merchants bearing gifts to her new home, to ensure that she was never without necessities. In the same breath he sent assassins to follow the boy as he made mischief in the marketplace, watching and ever biding. It had to look like an accident, lest he become the scourge of his darling Kažhrys, and the very ruin of whom the oracle had forewarned. No, a simple knife to the throat would not do, not when it would drive her away from him, for a life without his one and only love was not worth all the peace and prosperity in the world. His chance finally came when the boy had reached his twilight years. At the dawn of adulthood he had grown weary of his mother's doting, her obsessing over his safety and whereabouts. He had wearied too of manual labor and the sick and the stink and of sleeping on the floor of a hut where the other boys looked at him strangely. So he asked of his only and most unlikely friend, an officer's son named Mitruya, that he secure a horse and wagon and as many provisions as would fit inside. They set off together to see the world and find a place which would accept them as they came. The assassins followed, and Ephaerzes rested easily, thinking his troubles had ended. He sired two more sons with his new wife, formerly his favorite concubine, and began to groom them as heirs. Only, some years had passed and the boy had returned. With an army at his back and hatred in his heart for whatever he had seen on the other side of the world. Immediately he imprisoned his own father and began to cull the sycophants of his court. The conquests of an urchin turned emperor, of King Dāmaxāriš, had begun. The all-devouring flame had come at last for the people of Eshkhep. Actually his reign started off amicably. After choosing a new staff (including Mitruya, now the general of his armies), he quelled the rebellions of the frontier territories. Then he began charity work for the poor, giving merchants and traders tax incentives to make donations to a new dole. Flour, medicine, and clothing became available to the capital's most destitute and desperate like never before. He funded the arts and the full calendar of festivals,, even for those gods whose stewards slandered and disowned his rule, and began a campaign to eliminate piracy beyond the city docks. He even lifted the ban on lepers, political prisoners, and other untouchables, allowing those who had been exiled across the River Mesphoth to return to their homes, assuming they had family to wait for them. Of course this generosity was draining the royal treasury. There were more people to feed and they all ate better than before. Further straining this money was the military, which the new king was reforming for a strange and personal conquest. Suddenly it was larger than it had ever been under the Nhirian rulers of Eshkhep. The king was gathering the larger, faster horses from eastern lands and training cavalrymen to shoot from horseback, rather than the clumsy chariots they had been using before. He was shrinking baggage-trains and forbidding women and children from the march. He was training professional heavy infantry from skirmishers and levied peasants. It appeared he planned to pay for his policies through conquest, and, unlike the past few kings, he planned to win. He has not shared his reasons for hating the Uzûrenids, and for warring with them, well beyond the fathoming of their two countries' past emperors. Should it matter anymore, now that they have been so utterly crushed on the battlefield? It was like nothing the world had seen before: sailing an army across an ocean, marching it across hostile territory and through a treacherous mountain range during wintertime, all with only the barest of baggage and burden-animals. Rendezvousing with their cavalry at an enemy port which they first had to conquer with barely half of their army (itself half the size of their enemies'). Besieging an "unsiegable" city and winning. The suit for peace has begun. Dāmaxāriš must decide not only how he will keep his new subjects in line, but also how to manage the affairs of the western plots from afar. He must appease his nobility both old and new, with their never-ceasing squabbles over land and wealth and power. He must decide what to do with the allies he has made beyond his walls ... and the enemies within.[/color][/cell][/row][/table][/hider]