History Of Hon - Onigato/ExaltedHonese GitHub Wiki

The story of Hon has no true beginning, but we must begin somewhere, and the Contagion and Faewars are as good a place as any.

The lands that would one day become “Hon” were once the demesne of our fallen brethren of the Sun, and due to the richness of the land from their durable blessings it was farm and ranchland throughout the age of the Shogunate. When the Contagion sprang out of the wild jungles of the southeast it spread faster than wildfire, spreading with speed unmatched by any disease prior or since, and with a ferocity and killing strength unrivaled in all history. The very richness of the lands that would become Hon worked against it, for the citizenry were well accustomed to being ignored by the ravages of the Shogunate’s internecine warfare, the lands too valuable a source of food and mineral to fight above. To fight over, often, as the region changed hands well over a hundred times in the centuries of the Shogunate, but always as the prize fought over in battles somewhere else. The people had grown complacent and ripe for disease, and as there were (and honestly still are) no curatives that could work for the Contagion the land fell into rapid decline in only a year as the plague to end all plagues ravaged the land.

And then the Faewars came. When they came, they struck a land unprepared. Disease had killed all but one in ten or fifteen, and the odds that one person was a warrior trained were slim at best, nonexistent for most. A branch of the Faewars had stretched through the region, permanently altering the course of the Grey River, and altering the geomantic flows of Essence through the area until this very day, but they, as with all the Fae, were driven back by the use of the Realm Defense Grid, if at great cost. The region had been scoured thoroughly, with little human or spiritual presence remaining, and remained badly tainted by first the Wyld-touch and then the use of the Defense Grid by the Scarlet Empress in her defense of all Creation.

With no life more complex than grubs or birds surviving, the land lay fallow for decades, wracked by small pockets of the Wyld and tainted heavily. However, humans are incredibly resilient, and small enclaves of settlers from the lands that would evolve into Marukan crossed the Grey and merged with the neo-barbarian survivors, driven by the Horselords for being farmers instead of herders or simply seeking new fortunes in empty lands where no man could command another. Many were escaped slaves, and many more died attempting to escape across the thirty or more miles of the Grey, drowning as their strength gave out.

Eventually, as seems wont to happen, raiders and bandits formed clans, finding it easier to steal than to till the soil. The new settlers formed enclaves, armoured and walled villages. Commanders of battle rose to prominence, and were granted “titles” by the people they defended, “Lord” being the most common. It is pure happenstance that in the second century of the rule of the Scarlet Empress a boychild was born of one of these Mortal “noble” families, and altered the course of history for the region. The Jin family’s newest scion was named Hua at his coming-of-age ceremony, and no record of the childhood name has been found by this archivist.

The childhood of Jin Hua was unremarkable for his time and place of birth, the third son of a minor noble in a land that had no formal name remaining after the chaos of first the Contagion and then the Faewars. His familial holdings were known as Honsunai, a fairly good sized town on the river of the same name, set just below a series of cataracts that prevented any sizable shipping to continue further up the river. The site made for a good crossing point to the Marukani city of Varsi for the Guild caravans, and the land was beginning to restore some of its former fertility and value, so food was in sufficient abundance most years to make a small export to Nexus possible. Being the third son he was to be trained in trade and commerce, and if it hadn’t been for a pirate raid sailing up the Honsunai River in his twenty-fifth year Jin Hua would have presumably become a new Guild member and strengthened the trade of the region in a different way than history records.

But raid that fated pirate crew did, and Jin Hua mustered out with his elder brothers and the few family retainers. He has refused to elaborate on the precise details of the battle, but his immediately elder brother, Jin Banhu, was struck a mortal blow, and seeing his brother dying triggered Lunacy in Jin Hua. Arrows, swords, spears, even the deck mounted ballistae couldn’t harm him in his battle frenzy, and he slew the captain of the pirates in single combat. Legend states that in his frenzy he grabbed the man’s sword, tore it in two with his bare hands, then bit the man’s head off, but there is little corroborating evidence thereof.

The Lookshian monks hadn’t yet found sufficient time or energy to devote to a small set of enclaves, and so the new Moon-mad wasn’t hunted by the foe, but experienced several seasons of building a power-base for himself, using his family as living shields against retribution. Word did eventually reach Lookshy of an Anathema in the nearby lands, and a Wyld Hunt was called up, arriving a few months later.

Jin Hua stood at the gates of his city boldly when the Wyld Hunt from Lookshy arrived. He did not stand alone however, several thousand members of the citizenry, who Jin Hua had used his overwhelming powers on, were there as well, along with his parents, siblings, cousins, and all their retainers arrayed for battle. The head of the Hunt was a Karal, who boldly proclaimed “We come seeking the one who has been atainted by the light of the Moon, their soul reft of sanity. We seek to grant them the mercy of a clean, quick death instead of the wasting decline of madness and hunger insatiable, hunger that would ruin their family and cause them to eat the flesh of men in time. We know they have arisen here, and we ask you innocents to depart here, as your moon-maddened master befuddles your minds, we now free them from the bonds of madness.” He stretched forth his hand in a gesture of benediction, and there was a stir within the crowd, some having been swayed back to sanity by his words, others still under the control of Jin Hua.

Fighting broke out in the citizenry of Honsunai, and seeing an opportunity the Dragonbloods of Lookshy did not hesitate, but charged, their animas flaring high. One of them, a young Earth by her armor, rose a wall between Jin Hua and his supporting people, and delayed their engagement by a few moments. Jin Hua had already mastered the dark arts of the immovable rock, and the Dragonblooded blade simply bounced off his carapace, while his fists knocked Hunter after Hunter away. It was over in less than a minute, with three of the Dragonblooded dead (it’s very seldom easy to survive without ones’ head), and Jin Hua appearing to have no injury at all.

He roared more, “Leave this place. I rule this land, and know that should you return here I will defend my home, my lands, and my people, forever and ever. By the gods of this river I so swear!” It may have been pure coincidence that at that moment a log crashed into the wharf on the river, splashing everyone present, but regardless of coincidence or not, the surviving Dragonblooded gathered their dead and left.

History does not record their conversations after, but it does record the aftermath. The Hunt retreated to Lookshy, and gathered reinforcements, all but one of them. A single youth separated from her companions, apparently with a great deal of anger all around according to a single source, a peasant who overhead shouting from the Dragonblooded camp before witnessing the young, rather naked, woman storming back towards the city. She strode up to the main gates, which had been closed, and banging on them demanded to meet with Jin Hua privately. He granted her passage, and a dress to cover herself, and they met behind the closed doors of his private lodgings, though there was no doubt about their being at loggerheads with one another, their shouting could be heard for a mile around according to legend.

Their conversation was long and history fails to record it, and Diamond Orchid herself refuses to expand upon the conversation, saying only “He was very convincing.” Suffice to say that they argued for several hours, and eventually she knelt at his feet, begging to be made a student of his method.

It was nearly a year later when the Hunt returned with an entire Wing of Dragonblooded, two Legions of Ashigaru, and a Fang of their Warstriders, to find Honsunai reinforced itself. Diamond Orchid and Jin Hua had been rather busy in that year, after purging the unbelieving elements from the city, and the walls of Honsunai stood a solid thirty feet thick, nearly a hundred feet tall, and had weapons emplacements. Jin Hua and Diamond Orchid both stood atop the main gatehouse, and shouted down “You dare to return to my kingdom, wretches? I should have killed you all when I had the chance!”

There wasn’t much of a response, but the first volley of the mangonels sufficed as answer, this author supposes. There was an answering volley of stones from the walls, and lives were lost on both sides for a few minutes, before in a rush the Lookshians charged forward, scaling ladders ready. Jin Hua in his arrogance of his Anathema state jumped down, transforming into his fearsome beast-man form on the way down, and started fighting his way forward. He massacred hundreds of soldiers, but eventually even the “Invincible” Jin Hua couldn’t stand against the might of the combined forces before him, and he fell to a Warstrider’s Essence Cannons, another defeated Anathema.

Diamond Orchid realized she’d been controlled by some of the more insidious tricks the Anathema utilize to control people, attributing them to Jin Hua as some sort of magic with Moonsilver and blood transfer. The Lord of the place was allowed to remain in power, having been a victim of his own son’s mind control, but had to have a new advisor, and in a show of immense humility and self-effacement Diamond Orchid pleaded to the Lookshian leadership that she was the logical person to keep an eye on the city-state, having been affected by the Anathema once she’d “obviously be on her guard thereafter”. She did have to agree to concessions, mostly to having an Immaculate Monastery within the city to act as a surety that no new Anathema could arise without advance warning to the rest of the world, which she heartily agreed would be the correct method of safeguarding the population and protecting against the rise of another Anathema in the future.

The city-state of Honsunai was too small to become a member of the Confederation of Rivers, but was “ordered” to join the lesser organization of the Hundred Nations Alliance, an action that was welcomed with the fledgling nation. And a garrison of Lookshian soldiers was placed within the city itself, until the Monastery was able to be properly established, which took roughly a year. Jin Hua was buried with his arms and armor as tradition dictated, in a small Air Demesne on the outskirts of the city. The resultant Manse wasn’t anything particularly spectacular, but if you know where to look today you can still find the Tomb of the Fallen Anathema deep in the core of the Palace of Honsunai.

Over the next three year Diamond Orchid initiated a course of consolidation with the neighboring petty kingdoms, first heading west and incorporating the petty kingdom of Tsenmani through treaty, then south for Rannobe by marriage of their head family’s sole heir and daughter to Jin Chinwua, heir of the familial “throne”. Naramin to the north and Matsuhua to the east of Honsunai were something of an accident when they conspired through secret compact to assassinate Jin Chinwua and his new bride, an assassination attempt that was caught by Diamond Orchid. Her reprisal against the Dragonblooded warlords who had attempted to destabilize the area was… swift. In a lightning series of strikes led by herself and a crack team of combatants she rather literally decapitated the leadership of the two regions in the course of a single season, and reinstalled the families that had been displaced by the Dragonblooded usurpers, while simultaneously annexing the two regions as “protectorates”, a fiction that remains to this very day.

Not long after the incorporation of five “kingdoms” into one the head of the Jin family decided that it meant that there should be a more grandiose name for the new nation, and after consulting with Diamond Orchid and his son and heir Jin Chinwua, they decided to use the moniker “Empire of Hon”. This name definitely irked the Scarlet Empress, but independence from the Realm was already well established in the region, and since Lookshy considered the consolidation to be a stabilizing effect they didn’t really seem to care too very much.

The remaining districts came more slowly, Kimneuju to the south-west saw the economic growth Hon was experiencing and wanted to participate, but lacking road or water access to the major trade routes that led through Honese territory was very literally being bypassed. They requested annexation in Realm year 243, 8 in the Honese calendar. The regions of Tongzhu and Funashiro on what are now the Eastern Marches joined by treaty in RY279 and RY285 respectively, and largely for the same reason as Kimneuju, economic stability and growth. The two regions are more mountainous than most of latter Hon, and have poorer food growth potential, while offering mineral resources in exchange.

It wasn’t until RY302 that Saresu, also in the Eastern Reaches, applied to join the growing nation, partially delayed because the Guild route travels right through the region, and massively accelerated because the Guild Route Travels Right Through the Region. An attempted coup by Guild Factors to install a friendly Dragonblooded mercenary convinced Saresu to join Hon, if only to give them greater strength against internal overthrow. The northernmost region of Hon was annexed in response to Wyld Barbarian threats from the region, and was deemed Yueyang based upon a pun involving the name of the independent petty kingdom just to its south, Yueying. The conquest of Yueyang in RY306 led Yueying to also request annexation in RY307, given Hon now controlled their northern, eastern, and southern borders.

And it was so that Hon remained, ruled first by Jin Shingu, and then his son Jin Chinwua taking the throne in RY251, with Diamond Orchid his open hand. The practice of slave owning was abolished in RY253 and the institution of serfdom abolished in RY258. The codification of law in RY239 laid the foundations of the Magistracy’s own formation in RY242 with Diamond Orchid becoming the formal head in RY279. Meanwhile the structure of the military has been in a nigh permanent state of evolution since the founding. The military has been gradually reduced in overall power, in the 5th century there was a full Legion of foot in each region, but by the later decades of the 7th that had been reduced to a Wing nominally, and today it is seldom more than a single Talon of permanently stationed troops.

But where the military has been (on parchment at least) in decline, the bureaucracy of Hon has arisen steadily. Formally organized in RY309 to try and streamline the various regions and subregions the Honese Bureaucracy now stands at three thousand members, and regulates all aspects of trade, construction, and taxation with the assistance of the Magistracy as an enforcement arm. Diamond Orchid gravitated into the role of informal head of the Central Bureaucracy in RY315, then formally became the head of the Central Bureaucracy in RY346 by the decree of the new Empress Hei Jun Xi upon her ascension to the throne. It was that self-same Central Bureaucracy that led to the eventual annexation of Mianyao and Bansu in the south, the kingdoms thereon being effectively bribed into joining the Empire, and thereby bringing their vast timberlands with them. Being on the Grey River directly both regions had good access to food, water, and of course Guild traders, but the collective bargaining power of the Empire eventually won out as the Guild started raising their prices to sell to and lowered the rates at which they bought from the beleaguered nations. In RY432 Mianyao asked for formal annexation, and in RY475 Bansu did the same. Today the Mianyao and Bansu regions are still culturally distinct from their more northern countrymen, being foresters and crafters of fishing ships more than farmers and herders, but they still fully identify as Honese.

In RY364 the Arczeckh Hordes invaded into Chaya and the surrounding areas from their lands around the Maruto River, and the Honese military responded to the call to arms, with their forces led by a scion of the Imperial Family, Hei Zhu-Yong. He led the Honese contingent of the Hundred Nations Alliance forces to defend Chaya. Not much is known about the actual battle he led, but the causes and results are well documented.

The sorcerer-king, which we know to have been an Anathema Sunscorched by the name of Jinshtrimkha, summoned a demon of the Second Circle of Malfeas, and with that demon the Arczeckh ravaged the lands they went through. As is their custom any conquered survivors of the battles and regions, down to babes in arms, were ritualistically sacrificed and eaten, both to appease the Yozi-spawned hellbeast and their own dark hungers. Hei Zhu-Yong had, with characteristic speed, led his troops in the vanguard of the response forces, and made contact a few days ahead of the main body of the defenders. It was there that he faced the demon and the sorcerer who had summoned it along with the vanguard forces of the Arczeckh, and while he and his Dragonblooded Generals eventually prevailed and banished the demon back to Malfeas, and slew Jinshtrimkha, he himself was mortally wounded with infernal magics by the demon. With his entire force destroyed along with the vanguard force of the Arczeckh horde there was no-one to bind his wounds and he died on that field of honor. We don’t have any battlefield reports from the day itself, as there were no survivors.

A few days later the battlefield was found by the main forces of the Hundred Nations Alliance arrived, and they purified the ground as best they could. Hei Zhu-Yong was sent to Sijan with his generals for burial with full honors, and the army continued onwards, crushing the Arczeckh Horde now that their dark lord and his summoned monster were vanquished.