FrivYeti/WyldspanHis2
Sunlight On A Broken Column: The Imperial Restoration and Expansion
The throne room shone gold in the light of the rising sun. Sitting atop his marble throne, Emperor Markian I smiled benevolently down at the nervous man standing before him. Clad from head to toe in brilliant rainment, he was as a sunbeam that had deigned to step from the heavens.
"My lord, the Shipper's Guild informs me that the tariffs imposed for ships that wish to trade in the River Worlds are simply too high. At current rates, every merchant in the Guild will be forced into bankruptcy, and no one will be left to pass trade around. Excellency, we beg you for a reduction."
"And where would it go, hm?" Markian rose from the throne, his lips curling into a perfect smile. "All that money lost from the tariffs has to come from somewhere else. Perhaps the Shippers would prefer that I start reducing security fees, yes? It is not as though we are beset by enemies, after all." His eyes narrowed, and the man quickly scrambled backwards, bowing with every step.
"My lord, we understand greatly the dangers that this Empire faces, but surely..." He trailed off as Markian raised a single eyebrow.
"Is it truly so crippling? Very well. I will take the matter under advisement. You are dismissed." He sighed as the man scurried from the room. "The audience is over. Leave! All of you!" Courtiers and guards alike filed out, chattering to one another, and Markian sat back with a sigh, rubbing his temples.
"Is there a problem, Excellency?" Teran Sammael slid forwards from his place at the back of the room, a slim smile on his face.
"No, Sam. It's just... all of this. Who would have thought it would be so much work?" Markian snorted. "I preferred the good old days. Problems like this, you can't solve with a daiklave." He paused, and chuckled. "Well, I could, I suppose, but I don't imagine the solution would suit anyone." He turned, sighing. "I'm going to need your help, old friend. Look into this for me, hm? I'm going to take the Deliverance out for a few weeks, see if I can't find where those Deathknights raiding the Marrush line are coming from."
"Of course, Excellency." Sammael smiled, and saluted crisply. "Rest assured, the matter will be investigated and resolved before you even have time to return."
Markian smiled, and strolled towards the exit. It was good to have help that could be relied upon.
By the time that he returned, a week later, the merchants were quiet about their lot, and none spoke of high tariffs again. Oddly, nothing had actually changed, but the matter was not brought up at his next court, and Markian thankfully let it slip from his mind.
The Struggle For Life
With Creation shattered into hundreds of thousands of pieces, the world took stock. In many places, no one quite knew what happened, and entire lands were cut off completely from the rest of the world. Yu-Shan, once tied firmly to all of Creation, was shattered as well, with fragments and Sanctums on every world, rather than a single unified bureaucracy. Only the Celestial Incarnae were able to transcend this chaos, placing the Sun, Moon and the five bright stars in every sky to act as a reminder that Creation yet stood.
However, there were a host of other problems to deal with first. The greatest was that the Wyld, furious at having been denied, raged horribly against the Realms. Although they could not pin down the worlds and destroy them, nor could Shaped raksha pass through the barriers that guarded the worlds, they could - and did - act fiercely enough that no one could easily pass from one Manse to another. Any who tried were set upon by countless raksha and overwhelmed.
Things were complicated by a paucity of Celestial Exalted. When the Second Primordial War had raged, the Yozi had begun a campaign to overwhelm the Exalted by slaughtering them and then killing the newly Exalted weaklings. Lytek, overwhelmed, failed to respond in time, and thus there were hundreds of Essence Shards still not reborn when the worlds broke. Essence Shards scattered across a thousand worlds, and many landed in small worlds with no suitable candidates; lacking hosts, the Shards simply waited, hoping, for someone to come and be found worthy.
Without Celestial Exalts, no one had sufficient strength to brave the storms. On the slopes of Mount Meru, a world spanning a diameter of almost two hundred miles, the remnants of the Dynasty and their towns gathered to choose a successor to the Scarlet Throne. With no knowledge of how much of the Blessed Isle had survived, they chose Tepet Ejava, the Roseblack, as the next Empress. She accepted more out of a desire to quell the issue than out of any real belief that matters would change enough for the title to matter.
Over the next few years, the Wyld Storms gradually died down, but barely. Soon, the manses around the Blessed Isle were able to, with some effort, find one another. Over the next hundred and seventy-odd years, Ejava began to organize various expeditions, uniting the Manses of the Realm as she tried to find ways to connect to manses even further out. It was a time of slow recovery, as the Imperium desperately struggled to stay alive in the face of tremendous hardship.
Elsewhere, matters were equally complex. Other worlds gathered their own expeditions, trying to find one another. In what had once been the East, a Solar Exalt named Markian began organizing his own Realm, trying to build new wonders to rival the First Age as he tried to learn how many Exalted were left to join or oppose him. Those Lunars who had survived braved the Wyld, fighting monsters daily to keep the outlying manse networks intact. Matters crawled along, and didn't look to improve.
