FrivYeti/BagrashBureauHistory
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The History of the Bureau of Destiny
The Bureau of Destiny, stronghold of the Sidereal Exalted, has seen its fortunes rise and fall over the course of Ages, but it soldiers on. The task of defending Fate is a neverending one, and the Bureau has survived two calamities that nearly tore the world in half - they do not intend to see an upstart like the Sorcerer King lay them low.
The First Age and the Usurpation
During the First Age, the Bureau of Destiny operated openly, hand-in-hand with the Solar Deliberative. Its members were all technically members of the Deliberative, if only the lower chamber, and they served as advisers and assistants of the Solar Exalted. It was in this place that they saw the strange madness that was overtaking their friends, watched as corruption and indolence took the place of glory and righteousness, and it was thus that the Great Prophecy was enacted.
The Usurpation was hard on the Sidereal Exalted, if not nearly as hard as it was on the other Celestials. Six Sidereals were killed as rogues before the main operation began, as they tried to warn the Solars of what was to come. Ten more died in the first night of the purge, alongside two hundred and eighty solars and a hundred and twenty Lunars. The Sidereals were saddened to find that their Exaltations did not return, trapped in the Jade Prison along with those of their victims, but they were not surprised. The possibility had always been considered, but there was no way to recover those lost Exaltations without cracking the prison open. Thus, the Sidereals resigned themselves to having only ninety members, and the Fivescore Fellowship became such in name only.
The aftermath of the Usurpation was equally brutal. Twenty Solars escaped the initial purge, and along with those Lunars and gods who stood by them, they recognized the Sidereals as the architects of their misfortune. By the time they were killed, they had killed over thirty more Sidereals, from ambushes in Heaven, targeted demon attacks, and the like. It was in large part younger Sidereals who died, but all of them felt the sting. With only twenty-two elders remaining, the Sidereals found themselves ill-equipped to handle the early Shogunate, and by the time they had repaired all of the damage the Solars had dealt to Fate, matters had progressed too far.
The Shogunate
In some ways, the Shogunate was a triumph - it proved that the Dragon-Blooded could hold Creation, with the Sidereals working behind the scenes and the remaining Lunars exiled beyond the world. For five hundred years it stood as a vindication of what the Bronze Faction had claimed. At the same time, however, it was a disaster. Daimyos warred with each other with a fervency that the Solars had never dared attempt, weapons were drained away to battle other defenders of Creation when they should have been saved to fight the Fair Folk, and many outlying areas of Creation were whittled away. Stability was found, but the cost was high. Still, the overall mood of the Bureau was good. As time passed, and the eldest of the Sidereals died and were replaced by those who remembered only the Shogunate and the worst days of the First Age, fears subsided.
And then came the greatest disaster ever to befall Creation.
Contagion and Crusade
Troubleshooters and wanderers, the Sidereals were among the first to respond to reports of a strange new plague in Creation, and thus among the first to catch it. In one sense, this proved to be a blessing in disguise - by the end of the plague, they were already recovered and working on containing the aftermath. At the same time, many of them died before they knew what few means existed to save themselves. In all, over fifty Sidereals fell to the plague, many of them from the younger generations of Bureau staff.
The remaining members of the Bureau were forced to respond more quickly than they had imagined, as the Fair Folk returned to ravage the world. Sidereals fought alongside the Dragon-Blooded and Lunars, falling back as they were injured to shape fate while their brethern fought on the front lines, and then reversing positions. They fared far better numerically than the other Exalts, but that only meant that twenty-three in total survived the end of the war - over half of those who had made it through the Contagion, but less than a quarter of their total numbers. The Sidereals were shattered, and the years immediately after the war, as they waited for their kin to grow old enough to train, were difficult ones.
The Rise of the Realm and Bagrash Kol
With the Bureau shattered, and a new and unknown power in control of the Realm Defense Grid, it fell to one of the few remaining Sidereal elders to start the path that would dominate the next two hundred years. Chejop Kejak was not the oldest surviving Sidereal, being a fairly recently-named elder, but he was highly skilled and a political genius, and he set his sights on rebuilding the world the way it should have been after the Usurpation - with a powerful ruler in the centre, and disgruntled elements exiled to the fringes of the world. Thus it was that, after consulting with his fellow elders, he approached the Scarlet Empress and revealed himself. The rest, as they say, is history. With the assistance of the Bureau of Destiny, the Immaculate Faith has been sharpened and refined into the Immaculate Order. The Realm has stretched and grown, and Creation has stabilized.
Until Bagrash Kol. The rise of the Sorcerer King was not prophecized. Rumours say that the mighty artifact he wields was stolen from the Bureau's own vaults, that somehow Kol has powerful allies in Heaven. The Empire, they say, cannot be touched or predicted by the Loom of Fate, and its actions, although they do not cause fate snarls more than any other great land's, do cause the Loom to twitch and reweave itself as they shift the pattern of the future. The Sidereals are afraid, the whispers say. They are at war, and they are losing.
It is dangerous to listen to whispers, for they feed the fear in one's souls. The Bureau is at war. That much is admitted. But they will fight to the last to protect Creation from whatever forces it is that Bagrash controls.
