gorgenmast

Mutually Assured Destruction [Post World War 2/Cold War in Fictional World]

<Snipped quote by gorgenmast>

Sure thing, feel free to drop by the Discord chat too.

@Sini

Excellent. About halfway through my nation sheet at the moment. I'm hoping to have it finished sometime tonight or tomorrow morning.

Mutually Assured Destruction [Post World War 2/Cold War in Fictional World]

Just noticed this RP this morning and my interest is piqued. I'll look through the established nations and see what sort of role I can fill.

The Broken World: Nations of Azoth

Nice posts all, keep em coming. If anyone's got writer's block or can't figure out how to start, you're welcome to brainstorm with me over steam, PM, piratepad, etc. to figure out how to get you out of a rut.

The Broken World: Nations of Azoth

It was only natural that there would be many unusual adjustments for Remun in transitioning from the ward of his own father to emperor of the largest and most populous realm in all of Azoth. The past week had been a litany of accustoming himself to the numerous and often strange customs of being the Sashul of the Salished Empire. Among those changes was Remun’s very appearance. Prior to the cremation of his father and the subsequent coronation ceremony, his advisor Irssun had toiled diligently to give Remun the appearance of a true Sashul. His nappy, unruly hair had been combed and greased into a straight, flowing mane. He wore silk robes every day now; immaculate white and trimmed with golden yellow, royal purple, or crimson, with a matching sash draped over the shoulders. White cotton pants and slippers were occasionally visible underneath his flowing robes. Remun appreciated his new outfits, as he found them quite comfortable in the sultry Nyssos air, but there were other aspects of his new appearance that Remun did not welcome. Chief among those were his new beard.

A good beard was vital to a Sashul’s authority, Irssun had explained to Remun. The tradition of thick, black beards went back a thousand years, to the Saliszi warlords who descended from their mountain-nestled kingdoms in the Godsfang Mountains to conquer the Rainlands. Coming from the cool mountain vales to the North, the Saliszi were a naturally-hairier people than the Rainlanders, whose humid lowland home warranted no need for extra warmth. The ethnic Saliszi came to grow their beards out in order to distinguish themselves from the vanquished Rainlanders. Even to this day – after hundreds of years of interbreeding between the two peoples – most peasant men could only manage patchy scruff on their chins and jawlines. A large black beard was a symbol of wealth, power, wisdom, and masculinity; the patchy whiskers that grew on Remun’s chin and down his neck would simply not do. Irssun therefore ordered a servant to shave Remun’s facial hair down to stubble, and had another fashion a long, black goatee onto his face with horse hair and thick gobs of some sort of paste dabbed around his lips and chin – a much more respectable facial ornament for a young Sashul, to be sure.

But how it itched! There were many times when Remun could do naught but fantasize about tearing the false beard off and scratching every bit of hair off his face. He frequently tried to scratch at an errant twinge of itchiness under his nose, but rarely did his attempts get past the old spymaster Irssun, who would immediately slap the Sashul’s hands away from his face.

"Leave your beard be, your majesty," Master Irssun chided once again. "Your beard must remain intact if you wish to command even a modicum of respect from your lords. And we can ill afford to have you appear weak today."

Remun nodded in accord, and begrudgingly set his arms upon the armrests of the throne and diverted his attention from the nagging twinge at the corner of his lip to the vast throne chamber spread out before him.

The throne chamber was a massive, opulently decorated space fit for a Sashul - the Sashuls of the previous centuries, who exercised absolute rule over the Salished Empire at its zenith. When the word of the Sashul was the law for every lord in the Rainlands, the Arm, and the Sullied Coast, and the Drathan wizards lived in fear that their pagoda spires would one day be felled down with chains forged of Salished steel. Those days had come and left, but the palace built by mightier Sashuls maintained all the splendor of generations past, even if it were only just a thin veneer.

Columns of polished stone rose to a vaulted ceiling perhaps fifty feet above the floor of polished lyestone tiling, where the cornices of each column spider-webbed across the ceiling in a dizzying arabesque moulding. The intricate moulding spread across the ceiling, drawing back around three skylights positioned above the very center of the chamber, which infused the entire space with golden rays of sunlight. Tall, vaulted windows on either side of the chamber gave a view of the verdant courtyard gardens just outside, and manicured specimens of lacy cycads were positioned in alcoves between each window to allow some of the verdance within the chamber as well. The entire space was designed to draw the eye to the far side of the room, to the raised dais upon which the Sashul's throne, a towering seat nestled within its own recessed alcove carved from pale lyestone and dazzling insets of iridescent abelone shell. The builders of this palace meant for courtiers and visitors to have their focus dominated by the enthroned Sashul, but for Remun - imprisoned in a tiny cell for the past decade - the vastness of this space threatened to swallow him.

"Your majesty," one of the Sashul's Guard heralded from the far side of the chamber, "the viziers of the Dominion request your audience. Shall I grant them entry?"

Remun gave a quizzical glance to Irssun standing beside him, who gave the Sashul a twirling motion with his hands, gesturing for Remun to let them in already.

"You shall." Remun called across the chamber.

With that, the Sashul's guard posted at the far side of the chamber drew back the gatelike doors, allowing entry to sixteen to twenty men. They were dressed in fine robes of crimson or blue, many with chestpieces of banded lamellar armor covering their torsos and arms. Each man sported a fine beard - some had knappy braids twisted about one another, others had the locks of their beards held together with bands of iron - but each beard was magnificent and regal in its own regard. Sheathed swords jingling at their sashes indicated that these were martial men. They were the viziers, the lords entrusted with fielding and commanding hosts of Salished warriors.

"Your majesty," the man at the fore of this party began, coming to a stop a few paces before the dais. "We met briefly during the coronation, but I suspect that you may have forgotten me during the course of the ceremonies. Please allow me to properly introduce myself now."

This lead vizier, a younger man with an impressive mane despite his fewer years, took to one knee and drew a sword from an exquisite sheath of stingray leather, pointing it down into the lyestone tile. The blade caught the light and scattered it with an opalescent sheen, the sort of shine that steel can only carry when tempered with a human soul.

"I am Dimaza, son of Izadrun," the young vizier proclaimed. "My father served beside your father; fighting in the halls of Arshadar against the minions of the traitor Vissaban. Like my father before me, I have become a vizier in the service of the Sashul, and I shall protect his realm and his subjects until my dying breath - as did my father. It is my hope that we may shed blood together in the defense of the Dominion, as our fathers did a generation ago."

"I know of your father," Remun replied, recalling the name Izadrun from one of the texts he read in his captivity. "The loyalty of your father was well known, and I have no doubt that the same steadfastness runs through your veins."

"Then know these next words are not lightly spoken, young Sashul," Vizier Dimaza returned to his feet and returned his blade to the sheath in a single, fluid motion. "I am concerned."

"What concerns you, Vizier?"

"My companions and I sense a great danger. If I may speak truthfully, your majesty, loyalty is in short supply in this Dominion. We know that many of your lords would not heed the call to arms if I were to levy their fighting men to battle. The warlocks too know of the disunity throughout the Dominion, and I fear they seek to capitalize on it."

"The warriors of the Dratha are on the move, your majesty," an older vizier said ominously.

"I would not be so sure," Irssun dismissed with the wave of a hand, stepping out from beside Remun's throne to address the viziers. "I too have heard startling reports from the Ashlands: soldiers marshaling to the borderlands, scouts moving eastward... I have complete confidence that this is a feint. As the spymaster of the late Sashul, I have come to understand that deception is a weapon that the Dratha are far more inclined toward than any blade. What we are seeing in the east is the Congress of Masters asking us to tell them how weak we really are. We will not take their bait so easily."

"Thankfully, that is not for you to decide, spymaster," Vizier Dimaza retorted before turning to Remun. "Irssun may whisper whatever he likes in your ear, young Sashul, but know that he answers to your command, not the other way around. Hear this, your majesty. The Shelf of Vorgul must be fortified. We can hold back any invasion coming up the pathways up the shelf, but if their forces reach the high country near Zar Salis then it will be a difficult fight to win."

Irssun stifled his laughter with a loud snort. "I have kept Davorgada and his kin safe from Drathan plots since before you were in swaddling clothes, vizier. Accomplishing such a thing required some semblance of competency. A vizier needs only to know how his enemy dies, I must know how the enemy thinks. The Dratha do not mean to invade us now. It's too obvious, too brazen. It's totally unlike something the Masters would do. An invasion is a tremendous risk on their part, a risk that hinges on the recalcitrant lords doing nothing or perhaps even joining forces with the invaders. Do you find that a likely scenario, vizier?

And what might you suppose one of the rebellious or recalcitrant lords would prefer to do? Join briefly with the rest of the dominion to fend off a Drathan invasion and enjoy another generation of relative autonomy from Nyssos? Or stand by and let the Drathan armies lay waste to the Rainlands and utterly subjugate their holdings? A Drathan invasion would unite the Dominion because, to speak candidly, the Salished Empire is the lesser of two evils as far as a restive lord is concerned. The Congress understands this; what they want to know is if we are too weak and too frightened to act rationally."

"You think you know everything, don't you?" Dimaza sighed. "You think that because you have your spies all over Azoth telling you things you are all-knowing and all-seeing. But you didn't scale the citadel of Arshadar, and you weren't there to hear Vissaban utter his final words before the old Sashul ran a blade through his gut. But my father was, and he told me what transpired there."

"Something dark drives Khalul, and we must never let it take him here."

The Broken World: Nations of Azoth

Halfway through my next post, didn't get as much time to write as I expected so I'm a bit behind. Hope to see some more posts before I make my next entry.

A World Rent Asunder (Sci-Fi Faction RP)

I'm really digging the concept. Brainstorming a brief application.

The Broken World: Nations of Azoth

@gorgenmast Bravo dude, great post

@Flagg

Thank you for the kind remarks. I really enjoyed your posts as well and look forward to a post on the Dratha. Starting my next post now. Expect it later this week.

If those riders stumbled into a video game convention they'd have soulsteel to last a life time.

@Pepperm1nts

The virgins also have to be girls, so comicon is right out as well

The Broken World: Nations of Azoth

Magali could see a great plume of smoke rising up into a purple twilight sky, winding earthward to a tiny pinprick of orange light somewhere far to the west, somewhere close to Nyssos. A caravan had passed through the village this morning from the capital, bringing word that Sashul Davorgada had died. She watched that distant pyre flicker and churn against the looming night setting in from the west for a brief moment, but ultimately paid it little mind and continued on her way. For as the Sashul paid little mind to the goings-on of the peasantry, the people of the Rainlands were largely ignorant of their Sashul.

The village was settling down for the night as she strolled though the disorganized smattering of wattle-and-daub huts that comprised this countryside hamlet, a ratty old basket of woven dumir reeds cradled in the bend of her elbow. The men of the village were returning to their domiciles with hoes caked in dirt or nets of wriggling fish. Cooking fires glowed from within the huts with a warm and inviting light as she strolled along the filthy, muddied ruts. The smoke was infused with the smell of boiled ashroot and lentils, which mixed with the rancid odor of human squalor that clung to this village. The smell reminded her how hungry she was, yet made her stomach churn; the odor of the town was both compelling and repulsive. Equal measures of compulsion and revulsion, Magali thought, was an apt summary of her feelings for the hamlet she called home.

She lived in a village that passing merchants and travelers typically called as Kul - the Ford in the Salished tongue, as the town was situated on a bluff overlooking a shallow stretch of the winding Tashgad River. But to the peasantry that inhabited this village, it was simply home, and any of the hundreds of other nameless villages that dotted the Rainlands might as well belong to distant and exotic kingdoms as far as the people of this hamlet were concerned. There was no need to name this place, no need to distinguish it from its neighbors, because nearly everyone who lived in as Kul had been born there, and almost all of them would die there too.

Magali's father had been one of the few to escape this place. She was but a little girl when the Sashul's men rode into the village and called the young men of the village to arms for a foreign campaign against a pirate stronghold on the Sullied Coast. Her father either died fighting the pirates of Sirtu or amassed enough loot from the capture of that fortress to make a new life for himself, because the day he marched off to Nyssos was the last time she had ever seen him. Whatever his fate, Magali was sure it was better than the short, difficult life that the peasants led here.

When he left to fight in the Sirtuan Corsair War, Magali's father left behind a wife, two sons, and two daughters in unenviable circumstances. Being a solitary peasant woman was a difficult proposition on its own, to say nothing of having four additional mouths to feed. It was not unheard of for widowed mothers in this village to throw themselves off the bluff or drown themselves in the Tashgad to escape the unbridled wretchedness that their lives had become. But Magali's mother was a tougher sort of woman than them, and she had resolved to feed her children whatever the price.

Her mother had just shooed her children out of the hut, as she always did when she was having guests over. Magali was a young girl who had only seen the ebbing of her fourteenth monsoon, but she was plenty old enough to understand what that word was a euphemism for. The younger children typically played around the village when this happened, blissfully oblivious to the shameful acts occurring within their own home. Magali, however, took pity upon her mother and had decided to help her feed the family in whatever small way she could - that she might prevent her mother having just one visit from the guests. To that end, she would be catching mudcrabs.

The huts of the village were built up to the very edge of the bluff, where Magali looked down to the river below. It was a sixty foot drop to the babbling Tashgad; a sheer drop to someone who didn't know the way. But if one looked carefully knew where to look, there was a narrow, winding goatpath that could be followed all the way down to the reedy banks of the river. With her basket clutched firmly in her left hand, and her right pressed against the silty wall of the bluff, Magali descended the narrow path down to the river.

Though she had braved this path down dozens of times before, the descent was still harrowing. Pebbles and bits of grit scattered under her muddy, calloused feet, falling off the goatpath and tumbling all the way down. Night was descending fast as well, making it that much harder to find the footholds and avoid the weak ledges that crumbled underfoot. With diligence and care, Magali made it all the down to the riverbank intact.

The Tashgad River was wide and shallow here, saturated with sand and mud. The river gurgled and churned over the gravelly riffles and sandbars. Mats of dumir reeds grew tall and thick on the sediment-laden riverbanks and sandbars, where Magali knew she would find her quarry. She drove into the reeds in search of mudcrabs. Cold mud squished between her toes and splattered up to her calves as she combed through the reeds, prompting Magali to roll her jute-woven pants up above her knees. Even at her young age she had acquired an attractive, womanly shape; her legs were lithe and muscular, running up to a wide waist, with pert lumps already developing beneath her coarse linen shirt. Already she had become accustomed to unwanted attention from the boys of the village. A few moons ago, Magali had been cornered by a pair of older boys as she was climbing up the bluff after looking for mudcrabs one morning.

"Take off your shirt and let us see your tits," the younger boy demanded.

"Go to hell," Magali snarled.

"I'm not interested in getting any of that lip," the older boy retorted with a malign grin. "Just let us have our way with you and we'll be gentle. It should be no problem for the daughter of a whore, after all."

Magali went into a fury upon hearing that. Without warning, Magali seized the older boy by the left arm and cast him off the goatpath down the bluff. Had the boy fallen from a greater height, and were there not deep mud and dumir reeds directly below him to break the fall, the boy would have surely died. Instead, the two ruffians went on to give Magali a wide berth, and the village boys never bothered her again.

The sky's twilight glow was quickly fading; night was quickly descending upon the land and it would be difficult to see anything in the thick reeds before too long. With wide sweeps of her arms, Magali parted the reeds and scanned the fibrous reed stalks for any sign of her prey. In the corner of her left eye, she saw a flicker of movement - a mudcrab fleeing for cover among the reeds. Magali sprung forward, parting the reeds away from her face until she saw the creeping thing scurrying away. She stooped down and cupped her hands over it before. When she was sure she could feel the mudcrab squirming under the weight of her hands, she scooped it up and held it to her eyes. They were ugly little things, more akin to a prawn or louse than any true crab. Their taste was also inferior to a real crab: terribly gamey, with an aftertaste all too reminiscent of rotten fish. But meat of any sort was hard to come by for a peasant, and even a few of these mudcrabs would be a hearty supplement to their meager helpings of boiled ashroot.

Magali was able to hunt down another four mudcrabs before night fell in earnest and it was too dark to see anything in the reeds. A successful hunt by any measure. Content with her prey, Magali made her way back up the bluff, stopping every so often to keep the wriggling mudcrabs from crawling out of the basket. The climb was slow and cautious now that there was only starlight to light the way. By the time Magali returned home, the visitors would surely have left and her mother would be cleaned up. After some time, she had made her way up the bluff and back into the village. The cooking fires inside the huts had died down to low embers now, giving just enough light for Magali to find her way back home.

There were horses tethered to the weedy qaubir tree growing just beside her mother's hut - the first sign that something was amiss. Nobody in the village owned a horse; mother's visitors were travelers. And not just any country horses either - thoroughbred Shiqors, stable-shod and fitted with leather saddles worth more than what most peasants could expect to earn in many years. These were not simply travelers looking for a cheap lay, the riders of these steeds had to be wealthy men from one of the cities, a sort who had no business bedding with peasant women.

And then she heard her mother sobbing.

Magali practically dropped her basket of mudcrabs before skirting around the front door to the window at the back of the hut. Her mother typically draped a cloth over it in order to keep the neighbors from spying in on her salacious work, but Magali drew it back just enough to see what was going on inside.

There was a pair of men standing about near the cooking hearth, both clad in leather cuirasses with bands of iron bolted upon the leather. Dark blue robes - the sort wealthy men from the cities wore - draped down from underneath their leather chestpieces. They were a martial sort to be sure, but they were definitely not the Sashul's men. They looked on at her mother, curled up in a heap at the bare dirt floor, sobbing piteously.

"You must stop your crying, woman," one of the riders said. "You mustn't alert her to our presence."

Before Magali could process what the man had said, a pair of gloved and meaty palms seized her by the shoulders. She let out a piercing howl into the night as the man behind effortlessly hoisted her up and slung her over the shoulders like a sack of ashroots. She kicked and squirmed and writhed and bit against the giant of a man who had taken her. But her best efforts to escape only elicited a gravelly chuckle. Her bemused captor took her around the hut and barged inside.

"I found her!" Magali's captor bellowed as he presented the girl to his two companions as a hunter might with a prize boar.

"Excellent," the most opulently-dressed of the three riders exclaimed - a young man with a nascent beard that he could only manage to braid two or three times. "I was afraid she may have been frightened off by her mother's lamentations, but I am pleased that is not the case. This profession is so much more pleasant when all parties are cooperative."

"... and isn't she marvelous," the leader cooed, brushing Magali's cheek with the back of his finger. Magali nearly bit down on his finger, but the rider withdrew his hand before she could even attempt it - as if he knew exactly when to retract his finger out of experience. "What a soul she must have... I take it her womanhood is still intact?" He said to Magali's mother. Her face was swollen with tears, and she could only respond with a wild nod between her croaking sobs.

"Mother!" Magali screamed, "what are they doing?!"

"I'm so sorry," her mother croaked in between sobs, "I'm sorry, so sorry!"

The leader of the riders drew a leather bag the size of a fist - jingling with more silver elish than the big rider could hold in one outstretched palm - and dropped it onto the dirt floor.

"We'll take her."

The Broken World: Nations of Azoth

I'm really glad to see the sudden burst of activity. I'm working through my next post but it may be difficult to post as I am staying in a cabin without phone service or internet connection. I'll keep you posted. Looking forward to reading these posts.

The Broken World: Nations of Azoth

Torches roared softly as Irssun led Remun deep within the palace, somewhere below the magnificent throne chamber and opulent halls he had scampered throughout as a young boy. Remun had forgotten much of the palace's layout during his years of confinement in the tower, but he distinctly recalled being forbidden from playing in these cellars. The stones that comprised these cavernous halls were ancient indeed; the torchlight of the Sashul's Guard illuminated infant stalactites that had formed over a thousand years of sediment-rich water leeching through the stones of the vaulted ceiling above. Cobwebs laden with centuries of dust hung in the stolid air as banners of a long dead and forgotten kingdom. Mardok the Subjugator, the very first Emperor of the Salished Dominion, founded the city that would become Nyssos atop the ruins of the castle of some vanquished Rainlander king, and this dark undercroft was the last remnant of that ancient citadel.

The vaulted corridor led into an antechamber illuminated by a brazier, where a handful of palace guards stood vigil at the entry to a larger chamber beyond. Without doubt, they knew Irssun and his entourage of Sashul's Guard, but they did not recognize Remun, and so they failed to make way as Irssun approached.

"Forgive us, Master Irssun, but I cannot permit the boy to pass," one of the palace guards spoke up, stepping directly in the path of Irssun and his entourage.

"Stand aside," Irssun commanded. "This boy is the last living son of the Sashul. You will let us pass." With no further comment, the palace guards stepped to the side, standing at rigid attention on both sides of the portal to the chamber beyond. Irssun, Remun, and the Sashul's Guard went inside.

Beyond the archway was a larger chamber whose stalactite-studded ceiling was held up by pillars of crudely-hewn stones. The floor was covered thickly in dust. Shards of pottery and dust-covered urns embedded within the soil suggested that this was once a storage chamber for the ruined castle. Looting warriors under the command of Remun's distant forebear likely smashed these very pots and vases a thousand years ago during Mardok's sack of the original citadel. Today this chamber housed broken and ruined remains of a different sort.

In the flickering glow of a triad of braziers filled with crackling coals: a man-shaped figure resting upon a wicker cot, draped over with a veil of purple silk. Remun stepped past Irssun and the guards and stood above the veiled body of Sashul Davorgada. Remun gingerly tugged on a corner of the veil and revealed the lifeless face of his father, only to find a face he scarcely recognized.

A withered, pallid visage met Remun's eyes as he drew back the sheet. Fatty, wrinkled skin hung limply to his face, seemingly ready to slough off at the slightest agitation. There were bags under closed eyelids, sagging and purple with red veins coursing just beneath the skin. His hair was thinned and gray and the natural knappiness of ethnic Salished hair had been left unchecked, resulting in a long, wiry mane. Gone was the stark jet-black beard that Remun remembered, so meticulously greased and braided that it looked as if it were carved from crespice wood; a mop of frazzled whiskers were all that remained.

This was not the Sashul Davorgada that had been Remun's father, the liberator of Arshadar, the executioner of Lord Vissaban and a half dozen other rebellious lords, and the man who had imprisoned Remun for ten years for a crime he would never dream of commiting; but he had been once. A thick and squarish jaw peering through the sallowed flesh and the tall, blocky nose that Remun had inherited gave proof that the corpse before him had indeed been his father many years ago.

"What happened to him?" Remun asked with languid dejection, keeping his gaze fixed upon the face of the dead Sashul.

"Nothing nefarious," Irssun responded, stepping forth to join Remun beside the cot. "He passed in his sleep, the Sashul's Guard posted outside his bedchamber reported nothing of note until he failed to wake this morning. I personally inspected the chamber, and found no sign of struggle or intrusion - as your father's spymaster for a generation I know the hallmarks of even the most delicate assassinations. If he was poisoned, I could find no trace of it in his salivary humors. There were no bites, cuts, scrapes, or wounds. Not even the Dratha have assassins capable of dispatching a target so cleanly. If anything, it was fear that killed your father.

"Fear?" Remun asked, parting his gaze of his deceased father to meet Irssun's sharp, calculating eyes. "You mean to tell me that jailing his own sons was not enough to quell his paranoia?" The smallest ember of anger burned within him, and even the calming B'zuri rituals he had learned to control this fury were struggling to quench the vitriol threatening to ignite within his heart.

"No," said Irssun plainly. "Ever since his own coronation, your father heard only treachery in every word and daggers in men's smiles. Just as your brother was born and before you were ever thought of, Vissaban's revolt served to assure your father's lunatic fears. The Congress of Masters lost their chance to break the Salished Empire on the ramparts of Arshadar, but they soon recognized the chance to break the Sashul instead. Their spymasters fed us misinformation, fabricated rumors of treason where no malignant plots existed. Your father personally executed two lords that I later found to be entirely innocent. The lords therefore feared their Sashul, and the Sashul feared his lords."

"Constant worry and fretting ground your father down, and when his health failed him, many lords saw their opportunity to free themselves." Irssun continued, pacing slowly around the cot now. "Varrod and his clique and the Ahsor Vok family have departed the dominion except in name, and another four holdings have expressly refused to answer to Nyssos. Half of the Empire is in revolt; Khalul achieved with a score of spymasters what all of Vissaban's levies and an Ashenrider army could not. So great is the triumph of the Congress that we cannot even commit your father's remains to the necropolis of Zuag-Si, for a wretched and depraved clique of degenerates has been allowed to usurp control of the citadel there. And even if that were not the case, the funerary procession would certainly be waylayed by the brigand armies and pirates that now rule the countryside."

Remun replaced the veil over his father's face. "It would appear that the situation is utterly hopeless," he concluded spiritlessly. "When the lords know that my father is dead, and a boy who has scarcely seen the light of the sun since he was child is proclaimed Sashul, what hope is there for the Salished Empire? The lords will unanimously abandon the Dominion, for no lord will ever answer to a boy whose only understanding of Azoth comes from books and scrolls? I think that a spymaster of all men would be able to predict such an outcome.

Why would you even let me out of my chamber to begin with? You would be better served leaving me in my chamber to rot while you fled the coming catastrophe. Do you intend to see me to the coronation, only to serve me on a platter to the Dratha in exchange for your own life?"

"You will not question my loyalty, you dolt!" Irssun snarled, startling Remun. Save for the crackling braziers, silence settled once again upon the cavernous undercroft. "Even your father was smart enough to trust in me. If you wish to make it through the coming days without a blade in your throat then you will do as your father did and trust in me as well."

"Understand, Remun, that I have no illusions as to the current state of affairs," Irssun continued with a sigh. "The coming days, years perhaps, will be among the darkest in the history of the Salished Dominion. But they need not be the end, or even the beginning of the end. I see you have little faith in yourself, that you do not believe yourself fit to be Sashul."

"How could I be?" Remun protested. "I know nothing of being Sashul."

"Not true," Irssun interjected. "On the contrary, you will likely be the most well-learned Sashul in the history of the Empire. You have spent the last ten years studying history, religion, politics, and statecraft. You have been training to be Sashul with utmost rigor since you were a child."

"Y-you knew I read?" Remun asked incredulously.

"Knew?" Irssun scoffed. "I've been giving you most of those texts. Did you seriously believe that this palace's library had intact copies of the B'zuri Manuals just laying about? Those scrolls cost a small fortune to procure, but I knew that their teachings would keep you from going mad in your captivity the way your brother did, so I acquired them for your study. I've been guiding your studies these years without your even knowing."

"But why?" Remun asked again. "Why should you care, Irssun? Why would you not simply leave?"

"There is something that few Sashuls or kings or emperors ever come to realize that I need you to understand, Remun: kingdoms and empires are not merely the playthings of kings and Sashuls. There are nearly a million souls living in the Salished Dominion, some of which I count as friends and kin and I will not see them all butchered and enslaved by Khalul and his ilk. I will not pass into the divine with the destruction of this empire written as my epitaph. And so I will spend my days serving you, the legitimate heir of the Salished Dominion, until my final breath, that you and your progeny will lead our people through these dark and treacherous times."

"If that is your motivation," Remun said, determination in his voice for the first time he could remember, "then I will put my trust in you. I will not let this empire sink into the abyss of deceit and bloodletting. I will be the Sashul that the Dominion needs."

"I am relieved," Irssun replied with a sigh, perhaps in relief or perhaps also in anticipation of the toil to come.

"There is much to be done." Irssun continued, turning to the veiled body on the cot. "The world must know eventually of the passing of Sashul Davorgada. In lieu of interment at Zuag-Si, his earthly remains shall be burned in a mighty pyre that his soul may be committed up to the heavens on the rising smoke.

And there, our people will be introduced to their next Sashul."