>>@CMDR: ORDERS | PARIS, FRANCE

[byfist]

Congratulations, soldiers, the field of Valmy is yours.

ORDERS: We move to Paris at 0600, local time. Before her erasure, Xici revealed that the Regency has plans in action in Paris, France. It has to do with the trial of Louis, however, she was not able to reveal more. We will be marching on foot and by cart. The rain will not be clearing until we reach Paris. I suggest packing everything you need on the carts and keeping your own gear light. No need to wear yourselves out - you fought well. The road to Paris should be smooth.

However, to our newcomers or those that have forgotten. If last night's events did not make it abundantly clear what happens when the Regency finds out about your person, there is no clearer warning this: they will not just kill you, they will erase you. So leave nothing of yourself behind. Guard yourselves, reveal nothing of your life. Your name, your home, nothing of it. Or the same fate awaits you. If you think yourself either too powerful or insignificant to avoid such a fate, do not think yourself safe, they will raze your entire home to the ground.

Comments

[northerndragon]

And this is how they would raze our homes to the ground?

What else can they do?

[byfist]

@AEGONNER Perhaps. Once they knew it was your home, they might go far enough back, to stop the stardust that will form life on your land from forming. But that sort of extent is obvious and the politics of the situation is... complicated.

I was present in one case where they poisoned the rivers that was the only clean source for miles. Those events are a little easier for them to hide, so often they will seek to remove their threats in such ways, if that's what you're asking?

[northerndragon]

That's what I'm asking.

I'm no stranger to complicated politics. Why are they so in this situation?

[He expects that he may not get an answer to that one, and that any answers he receives may only be half-true, if they're true at all.]

[byfist]

[ There's a long pause. And then, the wall of text appears: ]

@AEGONNER

There was once many more ruling families, so to speak, that ran the Regency as we now know it. It was not a Regency then, of course. It was the line founded by Kuon the first. But diverted amongst many as it often is.

However they grew weak, corrupted by their own opulence. Uncaring in their beauty. They do not want to look after what Kuon the first built. I suppose that is what what made it easy for Regent Tal-Viero Suonn when the technology came into being. To go back, in time and move through dimension. No one that should have been, was paying attention. Everyone was said to have seen the potential, of course, but no one would dare. It was however, Tal-Viero that saw what could truly become of it. He only needed the one swift, correct stroke.

He had an enemy, another great family, who had as much power as the Emperor himself, who was not interested in an upstart general challenging her.

Until Suonn found evidence to support it that she was traitor. On private orders, went to find the direct branch ancestor and killed them. It was masterful, if I were to appreciate it in a military sense. It seems the ancestor in question was prolific in their lovers. In a single night what you saw happen, happened on his orders to a family and all their cousins and relatives, bastard sons and daughters, servants from young scullery maids to the oldest butlers. They say the horror in the noble houses did not stop for days and they became terrified of their own blood. Clawed at it, wept, crying out the Emperor about being a criminal by bloodline. They said that it was from being aghast that they might share blood with her. The truth was simpler than that, the noble lines they had been so proud of were now a weapon by which to destroy them. Suonn had once and for all dominated them. He alone had the ability, he alone now controls them.

So the Emperor gave him the power he desired, the position of Regent with the oath sworn that he would never use it again. Never for any purpose except the highest ranks of treason.

Something that Suonn considers the same as Little Xici being captured for being where she was not supposed to be, apparently.

As you can see, complicated.