[hr][hr][center][h1]The Fall of the Jiang[/h1][h2]As Told by the Ogauraq of Salty Wind Village[/h2][/center][hr][hr][center][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YStx8bWTE1c]♫[/url][/center][hr][hr]
It was just after sunset when Finehair and Early Bird, storytellers of Salty WInd Village, took center stage. The sky immediately around them went dark. Then, upon that canvas played... a memory. Dragon Smirk, their younger peer, flashed images of 'old' at the human visitors. 'Two', added his younger sister, 'hundred'. 

It showed an emperor, and they had the sense that he was the second last Jiang Emperor, known as the 'Wailing King'. The images shifted to show a young man, traveling north, across the tundra that dominated northern Retan. He was with a woman and a number of others, and they seemed to be hunting mammoth. The humans chased them, slinging magics as they went, and the animals ran.

The humans fell off the pace, but the animals continued to rampage until they came upon an ogauraq village. The residents brought them under control, eventually, but two houses had been destroyed. Three people had been killed. Those around the clearing bowed their heads in silence.

The story carried on after a moment. It was.. immersive, as if they were there, inside of it.

The Ogauraq were angry at the humans and they argued, but the humans seemed to understand little of what they said. They offered some money, but that was an insult. One did not offer money for lives. There was no true apology. The young man was important. He was told not to apologize by an older woman who whispered in his ear.

He left, continuing north in search of the mammoths, hunting to prove something to himself or others. His clothes were grand and elaborate, as were those of the young woman who traveled with him. Finally, they came upon the herd again. They prepared their fine weapons and their powerful magics, but the mammoths fled into a valley and then a closed-off area, walled with great stones.

The Ogauraq refused to let the men pass, however, for these mammoths were theirs to keep and raise, to milk and to slaughter when they grew elderly or infirm.

The man was a prince, and he was desperate. He offered to pay, but payment for a life is an insult, as all ogauraq know. Lives are thoughts, feelings, memories, and knowledge. Payment is for goods. They argued. Then, the humans left.

In the night, there was a disturbance. The mammoths ran loose. They trampled the home where the farmer lived with his family. The human came to the rescue and slaughtered five of the beasts with his entourage.

Yet, he had been the one to release them.

He denied it, but the ogauraq could see it in his thoughts. He claimed that they were lying. He claimed that they had no right to look into his mind. [i]They [/i]claimed that he had no right to hunt these beasts that did not belong to him. He had not, he insisted, but he had offered to pay before. He offered again. The ogauraq were enraged. Payment for lives is an insult, and the actions of the humans had taken lives, now: multiple lives.

They demanded a life in return.

The humans balked, and then they ran. They ran with their ill-begotten meat and furs and tusks. They ran with blood on their hands. The ogauraq chased them down and bade them surrender. They would ask for only one life. The human prince called them savages and cannibals. He struck at them with fearsome magics and killed two more.

The ogauraq retreated, for they were not a warlike people. Now, however, their fury was aroused, and it spread quickly. The prince and his entourage were ambushed, chased, and harried until they were brought to a corner. There, they were captured. There, he told them that they could not possibly kill him or his father's armies would come and wipe them out.

That night, unwilling to face a justice that was not his father's, he tried to escape. In desperation, the ogauraq used their magic - their chemical magic - to cut him off from his sight. They warned him to stop but he scoffed that they would not harm him for fear of his father and that now he would have his revenge. 

He slipped on a patch of ice, while walking through a mountain pass. He fell and broke his head open. A life had been given. The other humans were released. The ogauraq explained to them what had happened. They explained that they debt was paid - though not in the way they had intended.

The next summer, as the snow melted and muskox and mammoth began to graze on the green grass, vast human armies marched north. They butchered ogauraq where they stood: man, woman, and child. They razed villages. Many humans died as well: levies from peasant families. The ogauraq were not a warlike people, but they were strong. 

The Wailing King, in his grief, threw more lives into the fire. The great dragons, who had been his allies, tried to calm him, and he turned on them too. One of his generals, the elder of a pair of twins from a prominent old family, helped him to hunt down and butcher the dragons, for he was a greatly powerful mage. He had strong allies as well, and he offered these in service of his king, who grew ever madder.

Yet, the general's brother was a wise man, as wise as his elder twin was strong. Magic tore the land asunder, people using it carelessly. Some rebelled against the king, supported by the dragons. Others wished the dragons dead. Still more - insidious forces from Nikan - sought to step in and take over. Religious authorities from the East tried to exploit the weakness. He preached moderation: in temperament, as the great Angic philosophers had taught, and in magic. He wished to save the last few dragons. He wished to spare the emperor's family. He spoke with his brother, and the general repented.

Together, they traveled north to the tundra and met with the ogauraq in secret. Both peoples were wary, but the twins promised that they could avenge their losses to the Wailing King and reclaim their stolen lands. Thereafter, they would be left in peace. The twins shared that they would act as custodians of the land instead. They they would rule harshly, perhaps, but fairly. They would return matters to balance. 
Not all of the ogauraq were convinced. The humans who they had once held some trust in, they now wished to avoid. Nonetheless, enough of them listened. The people of the north marched south.

There they found the humans at war with each other. The armies of the Twin Generals had surrounded the capital and some other large cities but now, at the precipice, the Wailing King had repented before his people and his ministers. This had been the generals' plan all along, he claimed. They had orchestrated it all!

The resolve of the people to depose him wavered. Many declared themselves neutral. Yet, that of the ogauraq did not. The Twins had treated with them in good faith. They had made an attempt to understand both their culture and their anger. They stormed the capital and there fought a terrible battle. How the humans fell before them: wave after wave, each one a life: thoughts, dreams, and knowledge. Each lost. But they remembered how they had been treated by this man and his armies. Much as it pained them, they hardened their hearts and fought on.

The conflagration grew, and the Twins dithered. They were engaged further south, in Kuobao, they claimed. Fires raged, destroying most of the old capital. Then, finally, the armies of the Twin Generals appeared. They swept down upon the burning city and extinguished its flames.
They saved human lives. They made peace with their human enemies. Then, they turned on the ogauraq.

Monsters.
Subhumans.
Traitors.

Because of their vendetta against the former emperor, the giants had come to the capital of their own volition and destroyed it. They had fought against both the Wailing King and the Twins. They had butchered humans by the tens of thousands. It was all a lie. The ogauraq protested, but nobody would listen to them, and the Twin Generals ensured it.

They made peace with the last few dragons and the great beings who the ogauraq had once respected said nothing to absolve them. They were... afraid. The ten great warriors who had fought alongside the Twins became the Black Guard. The Twin General became the Twin Emperors.
They hunted down and killed more ogauraq and the people of the tundra retreated further north to lick their wounds, recover, and hide.

The pair of storytellers paused. They shared the idea of 'two', and of 'hundred'.

A great spider's web was shown, with many spiders in it. In the middle were trapped the Twins. They had angered people unknown but powerful. An envoy of one of the five remaining dragons had come to the ogauraq. As an avatar for this great being, he had prostrated himself before them. He had asked that they once again come south. That they lend their strength.

That was why they were here now, in a small camp so far south as the capital bubbled with intrigue. It was only this group and a few others who had answered the call. They were a strong force, but few in number. They had little faith in dragons or humans, but the two among them - Niallus and Vel - had acted in an ogauraq's defense. Hence, they had been brought here. Hence, they had watched this story unfold.

The darkening faded though, now. The sky itself was dark and dotted with many thousands of stars. A faint greenish light wavered across its canvas, vast and phantasmal. The fire crackled. The ogauraq looked to the human pair. Who, they impressed upon the youths with thought-pictures, should they support? Which of the various spiders, or none?