Tales of Destiny

There has been no greater time of woe in our Empire than the Strife of Twin Emperors. At no other time, not even the death of the Sage Emperor himself, were such chaos and death wrought, for the Sage’s children had the wisdom not to turn the weapons and might of the Empire against itself. Not even the great sages and ministers are capable of tallying the true number of the dead in that millennium of terror, nor calculate the damage wrought.

Already, much is being made of Shang Tsung and his son Shang Cao’s sorcery. Much is said of them binding the minds of men and forcing them to service as their followers. This, I spit upon as a lie. A necessary lie, perhaps, to bury the blood that has been shed, but a lie all the same. The armies of the Thousand Lakes and the Ebon Rivers needed no such things to march and battle anew. I, a son of Jing, laugh at the notion that the soulwrights of the Sands needed more than Shang Tsung’s acknowledgement and funding to turn their arts to his cause.

In seeking to bury this truth, I fear that the seeds of our ultimate dissolution are being sowed as we speak. My countrymen, now unprotected by their ancestor, groan under the reparations demanded of them, though they were no more guilty than any others in this madness. The Horned Lords vanished, and those of a mind to hear can feel the Father’s Hearth convulse with whatever madness took them. The men of the south tear into each other still, their own strife unending. The brutal Xi rise on conquest and death, and I see no peace coming from the emperor's enthronement of such folk.

Shang Tsung was no beast or demon. He was merely a man. The younger of the brothers by mere minutes, his talent shook the heavens. Whatever he may have done, it must be remembered that he was a genius whose works could have transformed the Empire. The great cisterns and waterworks, which transformed so much of the Celestial Peaks into livable land, were his works. The new construction techniques, which saw roads pushed deeper into the wilderness than ever before, were his works.

Now they burn and crumble, just as the libraries and archives do. The new imperial decrees which demand security and protection for “dangerous knowledge” have seen dozens of sects shuttered. The Bai have stripped their bondsmen of great swathes of their libraries and locked away what has not been burned in their vaults. Even proud Zheng has submitted and enforced the new law upon their wildlands.

This is a mistake. Shang Cao wrought atrocities with his father’s knowledge when the war turned against him, but this is not a good reason for what was done. A curse upon those who would rather bind us to ignorance rather than face the true causes of this war.

Even should it cost my life, I will put this to paper and cast it into the realm of mind and dream. Shang Tsung should have been emperor. The Bai and the Lu, whose voices ultimately drowned out those who pointed out Shang Shou’s unfitness for the throne, bear the weight for beginning the madness. When the emperor ascended so suddenly, their insistence upon the right of first birth, even in the face of obvious incapability, showed their hand.

When the people of the Celestial Peaks rose against the fool emperor and cast him down in favor of Shang Tsung, it was made obvious. Yet the Bai are ever mighty, and the foolish mercy which spared Hu Shou’s life became Shang Tsung’s greatest mistake. When the armies of the Lakes marched through the passes to “restore order,” it was mere prelude.

Shang Tsung’s artifice saw the White Serpent and her armies thrown back by the then pitiful and disorganized forces of the Celestial Peaks, and the Strife began. The Zheng, previously silent, set themselves at his side, and my own countrymen, drawn by the promise of prominence for their arts, joined as well. Then came the Lu, striking the flank of their hated foes, the Zheng. The Savage Seas surged forth, their beasts falling upon the Sands, and the Horned Lords dithered with agents of both, refusing commitment.

War ravaged the Empire for the first time since the unification. Brutal and glorious both, the armies of the Twin Emperors marched and burned their own lands. The crafts of Shang Tsung, once spent on infrastructure, turned to death. The great throne palaces, defunct since the age of the Sage, thrummed with new life and hurled back the White Serpent’s warriors and assassins alike. So many wonders came from the workshops of Shang Tsung. Who now knows the makings of the Heavenforge Titans, whose footsteps pressed new lakes into the land, and whose mouths birthed a thousand iron soldiers in a day? Who can say that they could build again the Eight Winds Engine, which commanded the sky against the weather sorcery of the Lu?

Yet it would be amiss to not speak of the horrors as well. The Soul Crumbler, taking in blood and lives, emitted terrible rays which shattered the cultivation and souls of their targets, unleashing wailing hordes of broken ghosts in the wake of their shots. The Nightmare Walkers, whose skittering steps warped and tore the realm of dream, split open bleeding wounds from which spilled the darkest nightmares.

More horrors than wonders came as the centuries passed, and the lines moved ever against Shang Tsung. The Bai’s generals were too canny, and even in loss, inflicted great pain. The Xuan raided endlessly, and our people starved under the appetite of their beasts. The Zheng fought bravely, but without organization, and each fell alone.

The ending was inevitable. Even the people of the Peaks eventually turned from Shang Tsung as his mind rotted, and the revenant that had been a great man became more and more a puppet of his crueler son, nothing more than a tinker of atrocities. The Zheng turned as well, unable to countenance the new strategies issued from the Dragon Throne.

Then came the end, the burning of the Imperial City, mythologized already a bare century later. They say that the mad Shang, knowing defeat was nigh, wished to burn the palace and deny it to their foes. This, too, is a lie. My masters sought no such things, dreaming of victory even at the end. No, they sought instead the foundations of the Imperial Palace, the great work of the Sage and his son.

For their meddling, she awoke. They say the Celestial Dragon hurled down ten thousand bolts of lightning, slaying every supporter of the vile Shang. I saw no such mercy. When the second sun lit in the sky, and the lightning fell, there was no mercy or distinction. A city of a million souls was emptied and burned in an instant with only a random scattering of survivors throughout the palace, which stood unmarked, save for the ashen shadow of Shang Tsung, imprinted upon the wall of the Imperial Throne Hall.

It is a distressing thing to see reality changed before your eyes by rumors and stories.

Excerpt from the papers of Sage Jing Sungho, held in the restricted section of the imperial archive