Lexicon/BreadBasketUprising
Bread-Basket Uprising, the
Shataina, Servant of the Sun, Lady of Legends, tells the tale:
The infamous soul bells were invented long before the Lace and Paper War and the resultant Treaty of Bells, but it took a long time for them to see widespread use. Their inventor, the Lady Grieving Curtain of Flame, took a hundred years to study her first prototype, and did not fully understand the implications of her creation even then; she saw the soul bells merely as objects capable of storing memories, never dreaming that they could be used for a less benign purpose.
Because few would take the inventions of a young Dragon-Blood seriously, none gave Grieving Curtain's soul bells more than a cursory glance save alik-Lord Tirinnan. He had been exiled from the heart of the First Realm during the Age of Amarnath because of an ill-considered spell which had almost accidentally summoned Lamaiya, the Soft and Restless River, Demon of the Third Circle; and so he had nothing better to do than give young Grieving Curtain advice.
Alik-Lord Tirinnan had made, in his own view, one life-destroying mistake: his lack of thoroughness in that fateful, deadly Ritual of Incandescent Inveiglement. He had sworn thereafter to check every enchantment seven times. Thus, although he was not the most talented sorcerer of his time, he was certainly the most meticulous. It took him three examinations to determine the full capacities of the soul bell, and much less time to come up with his own use for them.
During his exile, the alik-lord had come to have strange political ideas; he is best known for his long tracts on the system of government he championed, ourinesse, for whose name I have not yet found a satisfactory translation. Filled with misguided zeal, he resolved to bring down the Deliberative using Grieving Curtain's invention.
The Deliberative traditionally fed upon bread-baskets filled with the choicest ambrosia pastries while in session. Alik-Lord Tirinnan persuaded the spirits in charge of these bread-baskets to his cause; he intended to smuggle enchanted, magically concealed soul bells into the Deliberative within the baskets, hoping to capture every member's Essence and thus have them at his mercy. Then, he imagined, they would institute ourinesse under his just and merciful instruction, and Creation would be much better off.
Unfortunately for alik-Lord Tirinnan, one of his spirit allies confided the grand plan to a pretty elemental, trying to impress her. She, naturally, immediately reported what she had heard to Ivory Testament, the cataphractoi insensiblis of the time. Alik-Lord Tirinnan was promptly executed, the bread-basket guardians were punished with temporary dissolution, and Lady Grieving Curtain of Flame was held for questioning for fifty years before her innocence was conceded and she was freed.
References:
~ Shataina
See also Shataina's other Lexicon entries
