Empress be trolling:
Ragara: heheh, I'm just going to kill off all my siblings to become emperor
Empress: Ragara! my surviving son, how great of you to still exist, here have a brother, his name is Sesus, I have this problem where my progeny keeps dying for some reason! I cannot possibly figure out who it might be, but clearly future heirs must be protected at all costs and taught to protect themselves better, given your knack for surviving while all others have died, your clearly the perfect person to protect and teach your newest member of the family. I'm sure you will do your best to keep him secure from whatever threat is menacing us, But I will hold you personally responsible if anything happens to him, what empress would I be if I didn't hold people responsible for things?
Ragara:....understood mother.
Empress: I'm going to named a heir after my first millennium of reign!
DBs: then your going to step down right?
*Empress just smiles*
DBs: Right?
*Empress Smiles wider*
DBs: Right!?
*Empress cackles evilly*
DBs: Dragons dammit!
They agreed that the Empress truly abdicated after seven years pass. This was 764. present day is 768. Only three years left before the Realm erupts like a volcano.
A Conversation that Realm people probably seriously had at one point:
Dynast: "Alright, lets make these dispossessed useful and enslave them, might as well get some money out of them."
Immaculate monks: "You can't enslave the dispossessed, that is uplifting them beyond their station!"
Dispossessed: "We just want to be useful and get some food and shelter!"
Monks: "shut up, you don't have rights!"
Disposessed: "rights? what are that? can you eat it? cause it don't matter, cause we want food."
Dynast: "join and work for me, and I'll pay you in food! I can't say you'll be uplifted to the prestigious status of slavery and thus get protection as being one of my property, but you'll get food!"
Dispossessed: ballin'.
Monks:.....you win this round, tyrannical dynast.
*snicker* I'm sorry, TFS ruined "Thunderhead" for me. I see it in the text and all I can think of, is a patrician or dragon-blooded version of abridged Cloud crossdressing to be accepted in female dominated realm referring to himself as that in disguise.
19 year old patrician: oh god I only have one year to prove I can Exalt then I'm a failure forever. whelp. time to pull off something stupid or die trying!
*Succeeds, Exalts as Solar*
New Anathema: DAMMIT! I wish I had died!
...now I can imagine a Dynast speaking to their friends and they ask:
"what do you do these days?"
and they answer "general meddling."
and they're all like "ah yes, I do a spot of general meddling as well, but I'm more of a war tourism person myself."
"ah yes indeed, but I'm partial to scheming and adventuring."
just job description: general meddling.
On Art:
Monk: ok here is how we detect art heresy. if its not approved dragon, burn it. if it is dragon, worship it, got it?
Other Monk: but most art is abstract or incredibly stylized and people keep saying their art is a metaphor for the dragons
Monk: just burn it anyways
Other monk: but we can't possibly enforce against the heresy of all the people with nude Empress artwork
Monk:.....damn, your right. just say that they're metaphorically depicting Hesieh and move on.
Geomancer con man Dynast succeeds by not knowing what he is doing:
Peasant: so your SURE that this will harmonize our geomancy
con man: yeah, fives, and pentagrams all the way down. entire town, pentagram, your house, pentagram, just always build in fives and your fine. when in doubt, use the five.
Peasant: sounds mystically plausible to me, take my money
Con man: works every time.
*later, real geomancer comes by*
Geomancer: wow, he built in fives all the way down, this man must be a genius
pancakes? wow, I guess this means pancakes are older than I thought, but the thought of people in the Realm eating pancakes is just funny to me and now I'm imagining a Twilight opening Creation's version of IHOP.
Peasant and Patrician Dinners: Happiness
Dynast Dinners: Oh no My parents are back
every city on the blessed isle has one or more temples to the immaculate dragons. because one, apparently isn't enough, they need to praise them twice as much to show that they care more than those other cities that only have one, they're only doing the minimal amount of praising.
aw yeah, folklore and superstition when magic actually exists, lets go. HAHAHAHAHA! MY EARLIER ABOUT FIVES WAS RIGHT ON THE NOSE! FIIIIIIVES! even more reason why just building things in five just works! AND YES! CHANGELING TALES OF MOUNTAIN FOLK! SICKNESSES ATTRIBUTED TO INVISIBLE THINGS! THEY THINK EPILEPSY IS A CURSE BY GODS! this makes me so happy.
YES! I was right! sorcerers do enter the immaculate order to wield sorcerous power!
wait there are just charlatans claiming to have magical powers everywhere? huh, guess that makes sense and makes Anathema a little harder to find. I can just imagine a charlatan claiming to have magical powers to curse a hated foe, the black helms coming to drag them away while the real Twilight Caste is right over there struggling not to burst out and correct people on their ignorance in fury.
The Imperial Force: only force in the Realm specifically empowered to detain and bring in Exalted, still has to grovel and give extravagant apologies. "Sincerest apologies my most esteemed prisoner..."
Trained beggars? excuse me? now I imagine criminal beggar lessons: "appearance is everything for begging, first you have to look as sad and pitiable as possible, really tug on the heartstrings..."
....an exigent of a hot springs god is a killer? don't go to the hot springs on the Blessed Isle, got it.
yes there is a canonical Realm Tarot!
I like how there are museums both religious and non in the Realm, this is the perfect kind of anitquarian nonsense for the Realm to have, and provides so much opportunity! a single thing displayed at one of these museums could be a plot hook all in itself. these things are plot hook central.
wow, couriers are badass in the Realm. don't mess with the mail I guess. now I imagining a courier coming up against some ridiculous opposition and just doing everything they can to deliver the message regardless, like some Exalts just being frustrated a freaking mailman is harder to catch than they think.
huh, tax collectors sometimes have to keep themselves from collecting too much tax even if honestly collected. hm. how odd, but I like how this gives a good legal/moral dilemma that you don't normally see in fiction.
speaking of money, almost every House is in debt. fantastic. oh earlier, the Imperial treasury is becoming a mess. so......yeah. and Ragara is playing the debt game, and it ends when someone cancels the debt.
I SO want to play a Magistrate now. this book makes them sound much more awesome than previous editions.
"oh yes, sure you own that jade, I put the numbers here instead of here, nevermind that the vault is inaccessible..."
I just realized that The Imperial Treasury can be abbreviated as TIT. and now I'm imagining the Realm games of thrones style nicknaming it the Realm's Tit and making jokes about how the Houses are suckling it dry, agh.
ok, the Assessors are apparently badass to, don't mess with mailmen or tax collectors in the Realm then.
Quote:
"-one cannot forge a daiklave out of paper money!-"
Origami Craft Twilight: Challenge. Accepted.
oh the All-seeing eye. this too is something I think is interesting, because man did 2e not do this good at all, so I'm seeing how this book does this better. its not a Sidereal puppet, and is in fact quite decentralized, to the point where its falling apart like the magistrates and some of it going rogue to do their own things, having little idea of who else is also apart of the Eye- oh wait nevermind, its the ISELSI's puppet now, and well a COUPLE Bronze Sidereals.
and the Deliberative is as squabbling and useless as ever, in both subtle corruption and shouting match versions. some things never change.
wait, the Empresses funeral will cost enough to bankrupt nations? WHY?
The Legions:
okay, seven full legions have deserted. great. great. this isn't a problem or anything.
a legion typically has 40 to 60 Dragon Blooded. wow okay then. good luck to a Lunar or Solar trying to assassinate all of them in a single night then. suddenly a Dawn caste spending all their essence to kill five doesn't seem all that invincible anymore.
the Immaculate Order. I'm interested in this primarily.
ah so the religion is very Buddhist/Hinduist. and look Heresy everywhere! just like wh40k. I like Immaculate Monks just KNOW that Anathema are other Exalted but just don't bother to explain it to people, they don't even pretend or delude themselves,t hey just think its tragic.
the weirdest thing about this is apparently, the Immaculate Texts include erotica. like its apparently the educational text for all of the Realm and their society. so its both education and religion at the same time.
and yeeeep, the Dynasts see everyone else as ignorant barbarians and wastes resources while getting rid of all doubt in their minds. thats bad. we doubt for a reason.
The Jmperial spelling returns in the Bless Jsle map! heheheh
....yeah I'm gonna have to stop there, its late and I still have three more chapters to get through. this book is great. really fleshes out a lot of this.