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 Post subject: The Unicorn Clan
PostPosted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 3:41 pm 
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The Ki-Rin Scattering

The Ki-Rin entered 5th century dispersed and divided. After the Battle with the Rocs early into the 3rd century on Otaku Shiko's advice to split up in search for way home Shinjo had cut the Blessed Mirror to retain emergency communication with the other families, but over the next two centuries it had rarely been used, and consequently each family learned to become self-reliant in their explorations of the Burning Sands for a way back to Rokugan. Mostly the hard way, as the negative consequences of the scattering soon showed.

The Shinjo

Shinjo led her vassals to travel south-east, guided by Martazera's stories about the ancient wars between the strange races of the Naga and the Ashalan. Upon hearing that the conflict had involved territories that resembled western Rokugan Shinjo rightly assumed there must have been overland connection, and made her people journey into the Western Wastes, but on encountering the Sand Sea they suffered losses and turned south. There, they encountered jungles and Shinjo decided to pursue yet another legend, that of Pahatan, the lost Golden City. Alas, while the city ruins and the Temple of the White Tiger were eventually found, no wisdom about the ancient routes was discovered there. Disappointment led Shinjo to move even further south, past the hinterlands of the Ivory Kingdoms, where she wanted to seek allies in finding the path. However, without her advisers by their side, the complicated religious wars and ever shifting alliances between the rajas proved too much to handle for her and her people. Deceptions of local elites, tropical diseases and assassinations by an evil cult only added to their woes. Increasingly frustrated, Shinjo abandoned hopes of receiving help and decided to find the path herself, riding straight north. This way in 442 she unwittingly waded into the Shadowlands. As her people were fending off the assaulting shadows, Shinjo used the mirror.

The Otaku

The Otaku initially traversed the Western Wastes toward north-east, trying to find passages back into the steppes of the Ujik-hai through the rugged terrain. But after the sudden death of Otaku Shiko in 238 whose age caught up with her without the divine presence of Kami Shinjo, their new leadership was clueless what to do next. In 298 they tried to find guidance in the city of Medinaat al-Salaam, but were taken for another Desert Moto raiding party and fired on without warning. Routed from the Prophet's Walls, they travelled south-east like the Shinjo before them. By taking the other route around the Sand Sea they arguably got the closest of all the groups to a way back as they reached the Empty Plains. There, they found refuge in the half-restored city of Laramun guarding a pass to the east, being fooled by the false hospitality of the sorcerers. Without other families with them, some of their precious memories of the earlier journeys of their people turned into obscurity after Shiko's death. Those who don't remember their mistakes are bound to repeat them, hence they didn't realise in time that they had entered the same city that the Ki-Rin had encountered from the other side the century before. They were lured in and enslaved by the immortals. The khadi used powerful magic to overpower them and bend their will, keeping them as bodyguards, servants and sex thralls. The captivity lasted four decades and it almost broke Otaku spirit. It actually required a defiant girl known as Kunami, a daughter of a khadi and his Otaku houri, who had secretly learnt the nature of the sorcery crippling the will of her mother's kin and how to unmake it. She conspired with Rumaru, Shiko's descendant, on how to turn against the Heartless. After a successful plot of seduction that set the sorcerers against one another, they bought enough time to flee the city on the giant steeds stolen from their former masters while setting it on fire to stall pursuit. They knew one path to Rokugan lay beyond Laramun, but they knew better than try to storm the city without Shinjo and the other Ki-Rin. Instead, they remained in the Empty Plains, leading nomadic life to avoid being tracked down by the khadi. While waiting for Shinjo to contact them they kept sending scouting parties in many directions searching for their brethren. Their new herd grazed and grew on the rich pastures of the steppe, while a man Otaku Hyuga mastered ways to breed and tame giant steeds, for what Rumaru awarded him the honour to found a vassal family. By the 5th century small groups of Iuchi found across the Sands or with the caravans started to flock to them, leading to gradual reunion of both families. Hence when the mirror lit up, both Otaku Fujiko and Iuchi Suasan could quickly respond.

The Iuchi

The Iuchi initially took a different approach, trying to discover more of the lore of the Sands and magical solutions to Ki-Rin woes. They dispersed even further and acted as inconspicuous pilgrims travelling in small groups across the Sands, gathering back at agreed places once or twice in a generation. Some of them sought the mystical Ashalan and the wisdom of the jinn, but found little of either. Some travelled to the Senpet Empire and studied partial copies of the Book of the Dead. Those learned a lot, but it was still before Chephren attempted the Ceremony of the Hidden Heart and opened the path of the khadi to the priests of Ten Thousand. Before his death, Iuchi had ordered them to avoid the sorcerers of Laramun, and they obeyed his last wish. Therefore in the end neither were they able to learn about the plight of Otaku nor to come to their aid. Instead, some pursued the cities lost to the Day of Wrath. They found the ruins of Qaharaba but failed to decipher the inscriptions there, lacking the Ide by their side. The most successful were those of them who managed to settle in the Jewel and establish connections with the pupils of Qadir. However, the more they were interested in explaining the magic of the Sands and in developing its uses, the fewer kami, which were scarce there in the first place, responded to their calls. Iuchi's successors, Nobane and Tsubei, ultimately managed to learn the workings of the Hakhim's Seal from the Qabal and create magical effects without kami's assistance. Following Shinjo's Law against inbreeding, they intermingled with many communities of the Sands, inviting varied ancestries into their bloodlines. By 5th century the family had more sahir than shugenja. Their daimyo Iuchi Suasan was one of the few who succeeded in merging both traditions in their magical practice, but also one of the first jinn-blooded among the Iuchi. Their restored contact with the Otaku triggered the end of the scattering, though Suasan's group was one of the last to leave the Jewel and arrive in the Empty Plains, not long before the mirror's call.

The Ide and the Moto

The Ide and the Moto travelled together farthest south-west, beyond the Great Void. It was the sheer tenacity of the Moto that let them survive traversing the great desert. They often had to fend off pirate sand ships and raids of Aysti nomads, and during one such battle in 266 they fought alongside a blue-skinned man named Hojyn. While the Ashalan explorer was willing to travel with them for a time and share some of the knowledge of his ancient race, the Ide could only faithfully record it without comprehension as they lacked the arcane insights of the Iuchi. But they were well-suited for what came after: their inclusion into the complicated international politics of the West.

The Desert Moto

After part of the Moto had been sealed by Iuchi's avalanche on the other side of the mountain pass where the Ki-Rin were defending against Yobanjin Great Hawk Riders, they didn't despair. After all, their people had pledged a blood oath to Shinjo Kami, and while she had broken the initial promise not to ever leave them, she had also promised later to always return. Besides, their tarkhan remained with Shinjo. So they stayed on the other part of the rummage while sending scouting parties along the mountain chain to seek out their brethren. But when days and weeks of waiting turned into months, the ugly truth started to creep in: either the other Ki-Rin had been all killed, or they had deserted them. And with that, came angst. One of the scouts named Moto Sharad seized the moment. He had uncovered Shinjo's blade, Kiro, from the rummage. A gift from Martazera, the blade with the ivory hilt was the symbol of union of both peoples, and of leadership. Sharad proclaimed that they were the only Ki-Rin left and asserted himself as the new tarkhan. The waiting was about to end, the Moto were led by Sharad to their ancestral Ujik-hai oases to gather strength and numbers before seeking vengeance on the Yobanjin. But their return proved that the Yobanjin had been thorough in their war on Ujik-hai, and the Ujik-hai that had refused to join the Ki-Rin either had fled, had been taken captive or had been wiped out. Sharad's leadership balanced on the edge of the blade when some other Moto claimed that their plight was a retribution of Lords of Death for betraying them, and they were fools following an oath-breaking foreign goddess. Sharad had to silence most of them with Kiro, but he did not persecute those who quietly returned to worshipping Shi-Tien Yen-Wang. Before another challenge to his authority would come he led the riders to the east, into the Chenzhong He valley, for killing and plundering, like in times before Shinjo, settling the score. The life of nomadic banditry consolidated the Moto again.

Once their retribution on the Yobanjin was over they moved back west chasing Senpet and Dahabi caravans, finding a northern passage into the valley of Nahr'Umar, where they harassed tribal settlements along the Fields of Rolling Grain until they reached the Dahabi city of Medinaat al-Salaam. Unfortunately for them, the City of Peace was undergoing a great transformation under the guidance of Mekhem. The Moto were repelled at its walls, and Sharad had fallen in the assault. Curiously, they might have rejoined with the Ki-Rin as the Otaku would ride into the Nahr'Umar valley several months later, but after their failed attack they had to flee from a Senpet chariot force sent from the north by the Pharaoh to wipe them out. They returned to their oases for a kurultai, the selection of a new leader, but it didn't go well as Sharad's sons fought bitterly among themselves for the right to wield Kiro. The Desert Moto fell into disunity, and it would take two centuries for most of the tribes to be united again, under tarkhan Mongke. During that time one band of Desert Moto actually encountered a group of Iuchi wanderers, but it was not a happy reunion. Barely past introductions, when the Moto heard that it was Iuchi who had collapsed the pass on the Moto during the Battle with the Rocs, the band leader, who had a narrow and biased understanding of the fate of his people, simply ordered them slain on spot.



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 Post subject: Re: The Unicorn Clan
PostPosted: Sun Aug 06, 2017 4:31 pm 
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The Unicorn Reunification

When in 442 the pieces of the Blessed Mirror lit up with the desperate call for help from Lady Shinjo, Otaku Fujiko responded immediately, while Iuchi Suasan did the same right after. But the Ide and the Moto had no means of knowing their Lady needed them, as their mirror was in hands unknown. Leaving only youngest children behind, along with the Otaku horseless men to guard them, all men and women capable of riding and carrying a blade, even those before the rites of passage, rode out from the Empty Plains westward, still hoping that the Moto and the Ide would catch up with them somehow. The horrors of battle at the stronghold of the Shadow was not something they had been prepared for, even with the assistance of the Iuchi. They had to watch how Shinjo is slowly engulfed by the Darkness while her children perish. As in her last desperate cry Shinjo ordered them to escape the Ki-Rin commanders horrifyingly realised that they were not here to win or even secure a tactical defeat, but to save their Clan from annihilation. Though Fujiko's calculus was slightly different than that of others. As Aranat, the last of Shinjo's progeny, was being torn to parts by faceless long-clawed shadow demons, she raised Shiotome to the last desperate charge. Their Iuchi-blessed umayari and the mighty hooves of their giant steeds drove a wedge into the sea of shadowspawn. The Battle Maidens managed to tear out a narrow path for the remaining Shinjo, children among them, to escape. Suasan tried to stop her, to call her back, as the only exit was flooded by the incorporeal monstrosities, but it was impossible without another cavalry thrust the Moto could have provided had they been there. As what was left of Ki-Rin fled, the Otaku were no more, partaking in whatever fate had befallen Shinjo.

The trauma was too much to bear and to reconcile with. The people once known as the Ki-Rin were decimated and forever scarred with the memories of unspeakable horrors and great defeat. They never had a clear plan for a life without Shinjo's guidance as they knew nothing of Rokugani practice to instate Champions in place of departing Kami, and their ties of kinship had weakened over two centuries of being mostly apart. They would likely have scattered forever if not for young Shinjo Yonaru, descendant of Kemuri, who had salvaged his divine great-grandmother's blade, Hayai. He used the authority derived from his ancestry and the possession of the blade to enforce a modicum of order and unity among the apathetic survivors. Yonaru initially avoided big words and declarations, but focused on exercising operational leadership by finding makeshift solutions and distributing menial tasks that kept the people going together. Suasan stood by him in the effort, but with Shinjo gone and their own connection to the kami mostly gone as well the Iuchi priesthood itself slipped into heterodoxy and could not readily provide one unifying religious narrative.

As the Otaku could not be readily salvaged as a standalone family, Yonaru had to make hard choices. To save as much of their heritage as possible, he took them into the Shinjo one way or another without prejudice about their future. The differences and divisions between great families and vassal families under Shinjo leadership were in flux at that time. The widowed Otaku men were allowed to take Shinjo or Iuchi wives and their children to ride horses regardless of gender, while their female children were fostered to the Marta who were both a matrilinear family and the keepers of the Clan memory and thus deemed most capable by Yonaru to preserve the traditions of the Shiotome. The Hyuga also swore fealty directly to Yonaru and were tasked with preservation of the herd of the great steeds as a common inheritance of the Clan.

Those moves had unforeseen durable consequences. Marta education strengthened the Ujik-hai identity among the Otaku daughters and as they started coming of age in the next decade the memory of their mothers had already turned distant. The eldest of them, who was ten in 442, was the daughter of the fallen Naoko daimyo and after her rites of passage in which she proved her tenacity and took the name Feng Xin (meaning Hyacinth, like Fujiko), with persuasiveness akin Martazera's she demanded of Yonaru to restore her leadership so that the tradition of battle maidens could be continued under her. He agreed, and merged the maidens and their Marta tutors into one family. That only opened the list of many concessions Naoko Feng Xin exacted from Yonaru leveraging with the Otaku heritage. To cement her right to represent the shiotome tradition he declared the Otaku name sacred because of their sacrifice and never to be used again, with the exclusive right of the Naoko to worship ancestral heroines in their own way: from the Otaku herself, to Martazera, Naoko and Shiko, to Yotoko, Kunami and Rumaru, to Fujiko and all that would come. To pick up numbers the female Naoko were also allowed to have many consorts in and outside marriage, taking responsibility only for female heirs. To legitimise the practice Feng Xin had actually successfully wooed Yonaru into siring her children even though he was already married, ensuring that it would be her progeny rather than Yonaru's first wive's who would lead the Clan in the future. While the Hyuga could not both restore the herd and keep purity of the blood of the steeds of the sorcerers, Feng Xin still secured a claim for the largest for her riders.

It took roughly a generation to restore the general sustainability and prowess of the Clan, during which they remained in the steppe of the Empty Plains, wary to stumble into a confrontation with any of the powers of the Burning Sands. Without the Otaku as they once had been it was impossible to preserve many Rokugani traditions. The new Naoko, while rapidly gaining prominence, represented Ujik-hai traditions of charismatic warrior's mystique rather than notions of Bushido. Hence even without the Moto the new cultural normal in customs, language and moral codes became a mixture of various gaijin influences. Relaxed marriage laws lead to the slow spread of polygamy and polyandry. resulting in emergence of complex webs of ancestry, inheritance and kinship that encouraged prioritisation of strength and merit over birthright in advancement and succession. From the Naoko ranks there emerged the kheshig, Yonaru's all-female personal guard, while the forces were reorganised in accordance with Ujik-hai traditions, into Left (Junghar), Centre (Khol) and Right (Baraunghar), while most military and political decisions were made collectively, during a kurultai. The severe custom of the kurichitai also became commonly accepted, as was the tolerance for varied worship and spiritual practices. Still, what kept the Ki-Rin people unified under Yonaru was mostly both his careful manoeuvring to strengthen community despite its increasing pluralism, and adherence to Shinjo's Promise and Law. In 470 during a kurultai Yonaru renewed the blood oath with his vassals among the Iuchi and the branches of the Shinjo and concluded it was time to raise a new banner. The depiction of Shinjo's non-human progeny would serve since then as the emblem of the newly established Unicorn Clan. Yonaru's chief commitment to his vassals was that of unifying all the lost people of Ki-Rin under the new banner, and seek retribution against all those who had wronged them during their long sojourns.

By then the news of the exploits of the Tarkhanate in the far west had already reached them, mostly from the caravans passing the Empty Plains they either traded with or preyed upon, though it was assumed rather than known that the entity had anything to do with the Moto and the Ide that had failed to answer Shinjo's call. Yonaru listened to many advisers and while he didn't just give in to the tale of Moto-Ide betrayal he nevertheless concluded that the intentions of whatever tarkhan who had accomplished it could not be taken for granted and before facing those distant cousins the Unicorn had to gather strength. The other considered direction was the return to the Ujik-hai deserts and reuniting with the people separated from them during the Battle with the Rocs. The Clan knew that one way there led through the closing valley of the Empty Plains astride which Laramun lay, and had been exploring this direction for many years already. Between the accounts of Otaku captivity, Iuchi advances in gaijin sorcery and reports that the city seemed deserted the Unicorn decided to take the risk. They prepared the whole Clan for the quickest of rides, and rode through the fateful valley in the night, shrouded by Iuchi magicks. Surprisingly, for reason they didn't fathom they passed unmolested and soon were back into the desert basin they had left over two centuries prior.

It was not long before they encountered parties of the Desert Moto. In accordance with Moto tactics they knew all too well, the encountered scouts avoided contact until a larger battle-ready force would arrive. The Naoko, having the wisdom of Martazera, advised to hide the non-combatants in the mountain hideouts and showed the way across the desert toward the ancestral oases of the Ujik-hai to force the hand of the other side. Before they reached them, however, one evening the dunes on the western horizon got littered with riders of the tribal warriors Moto Mongke had unified. The forces were roughly evenly matched in numbers, and there was no telling who would win if battle was chosen. All the wiser for past failures of the Ki-Rin, Yonaru would not risk another decimation of his people if it could be helped. He sent a call for a kurultai hoping the other side would recognise it. He rode forth with his kheshig, baring Hayai. And Mongke answered, riding forth with a few of his minor khans and guards, baring Kiro.

They held council over the night during which violence could have erupted on more than one occasion. Mongke initially refused to even consider joining forces with the Unicorn, recalling old grievance of being twice betrayed by Shinjo. But while sharing stories of their travails by the fireplace in the middle of the desert eventually let put many contentions aside and both men agreed they should seek vengeance against the Dahabi stronghold on Nahr'Umar, it came down to just one thing that couldn't be peacefully resolved - the leadership. Mongke was insistent that there can be only one khan of khans, and he would not stand down. He offered Yonaru to make Feng Xin the first among his wives and to wed Yonaru's children to his if Yonaru would recognise his authority. That incensed the Naoko daimyo who was ready to challenge the audacious Moto and led Mongke to mock Yonaru for his woman being stronger than him. For Yonaru, that was enough. Ever a consensual man, he finally agreed there could only be one Khagan, the Khan of Khans, and called out Mongke pledging to retake his great-grandmother's sword, to retake her people from him, and let his sons take all of Mongke's daughters as consorts. Hayai and Kiro clashed, and by dawn only one man was standing.

Yonaru's wound Mongke had dealt proved fatal, though no immediately. He lived long enough to secure reunification before one of Monkge's minor khans would try to back away and take his people back into the desert. It happened in two instances nonethless, but the Naoko hunted the defiant khans down and claimed their warriors back. Yonaru expanded and formalised the kurultai, including top commanders. He oversaw the marriage of his strongest son Kublai with Mongke's eldest daughter Chabi, whose betrothed young Kublai had exemplarily dispatched cleaving him in half, neck to loins, demonstrating his prowess to all minor khans who would think of challenging him in the future. Once all three armies of Left, Centre and Right were redivided and reinforced, Yonaru held one last ceremony of renewing the blood oath with the Desert Moto, declared war against Medinaat al-Salaam and passing both of Shinjo's swords to Kublai before he took the last lone ride into the desert, like a true Ujik-hai.

The Khagan, Shinjo Kublai, had his father's principled faith in the Unicorn and his mother's tenacity and cunning. But he was still just 16, even though his impressive constitution already found few equals and only the largest horse of Hyuga breed could carry his weight. It took him another year to consolidate the horde, dealing with minor power games and treacheries while preparing the plans for war. In 473 he crossed the western mountains by paths the Unicorn had not known before but now learned from the Desert Moto, and descended upon the Plains of Rolling Grain. He felt confident he could take the Jewel by force, but upon seeing the Prophet's Walls he adjusted and decided to rely on treachery, ordering the Iuchi infiltrate it and open the gates from inside. This plan did not come to fruition either as the Senpet answered Dahabi calls for relief before Kublai could attempt to take the city. The force was led by khadi Chephren, and the initial skirmishes were less than victorious. Kublai adjusted again and turned to war of attrition, harassing the supply lines of Senpet army, but while it did lock his enemies in the desert, the causalities were not always low as Chephren was a formidable foe. However, as the conflict lasted with various intensity for almost two years, it sent ripples across the Burning Sands. In 475 Ide emissaries sent from the Tarkhanate reached the horde with gifts and offers of camaraderie from Moto Hulagu, son of Moto Ariq. Kublai revealed his ancestry and demanded their fealty, which was immediately given in tears of joy. After learning everything he needed to know from them about the western branch of Ki-Rin he changed the strategy again and fell back from Medinaat al-Salaam, while sending emissaries back to Hulagu with gifts and well-wishes, with a call for kurultai. Kublai's gambit was that whatever Hulagu's motives, he could not refuse a traditional Ujik-hai call brought from Shinjo by Ide lest he would imperil the power base he had established. And Kublai was right.

The Kurultai of Two Khans happened in 476, in a desert oasis in the Western Wastes. Hulagu arrived with a the old Moto bannermen and several regiments of Mamluks, armed with muskets and cannons. While the passage through the desert had dented the forces of the Tarkhanate, Kublai's forces were far more thinned by over 3 years of struggles with the Senpet and the Dahabi, so Hulagu seemed to hold the advantage. But in any match of prowess, especially not in traditional wrestling, he could not stand against the large Shinjo as his body had grown soft over the years of opulence and sedentary life. The power of numbers and firepower faced a more traditional one, of spirit, legitimacy and leadership. As neither of them wanted an open conflict, they debated their options with each other for almost a week, often without other parties, with their troops and officers waiting anxiously for resolution.

The solution they finally announced was both as curious as it was ingenious. They would allow their people to to serve either of them as they pleased. The Unicorn would have a choice, to live in the West in the Moto Tarkhanate or in the Burning Sands with the horse lords of the Shinjo Kaghan. In one generation, in 25 years, there would be a grand kurultai which would choose the Khan of Khans from either the line of Hulagu or the line of Kublai. Until then, both men or their descendants would not fight over leadership but jointly plan the most important decisions for the Clan. Their first was to launch an all-out attack on Medinaat al-Salaam and conquer the Jewel for the Unicorn standing as one.

The armies of Chephren were waiting confidently, having laid a trap in the marshlands along the Nahr'umar, and their scouts had warned them that the Unicorn were coming. But nothing prepared them to face the double impact of Mamluk salvos and bombardment and repeated cavalry charges. The Senpet forces were quickly routed into the swamp, and by the end of the day their casualties could be counted in tens of thousands, and hundreds of chariots. Chephren, the Khadi general, fled from the battlefield, escaping Unicorn retribution and the assured wrath of the Pharaoh. But as the Great River carried all the blood spilled during the battle downstream to the very Eye of the Desert, it fulfilled an ancient prophecy of doom and the Pharaoh and his family committed suicide by entombing. His capital would indeed be soon sacked and burned by the Unicorn, innumerable old treasures would be captured, and many people would be taken into slavery. The Jewel, however, would not meet such fate. After first bombardments which made breaches in the Prophet's Walls, then Sultan would surrender the city and agree to pay haraj as a vassal of the Unicorn. Those most happy to take residence inside the Jewel were the Iuchi who had been trying to establish their presence there for a long time, and through clever Dahabi politics their daimyo would soon end with the heiress of House Basiri as his wife. But soon many Ide traders would arrive as well, forming new, well-protected overland trade routes between the Jewel and the Tarkhanate that progressively allowed various merchant communities, including the Tortoise, safely reach inland toward the City of Peace. The subjugation of it by the Khans has fostered a new era in continental trade.

Kublai would sojourn to the Tarkhanate to become familiar with it, but after several years of travelling around and growing fat he cast away the temptations of a comfortable life in which the slaves fight wars for their masters and returned to the steppe. He established his own seat of power in the oasis he had held talks with Hulagu, calling it Khanbalik, the City of Khan. It grew quickly as a nexus for trade between the Jewel and Aqahba, another pearl on a string spanning great deserts. Many of late Moto Ariq's bannermen who had witnessed Kublai's prowess in battle actually left Hulagu's side and followed the khan more after their own hearts. Same with many Ide, who had not forgotten the oaths their ancestor had made before Lady Shinjo. But there was also movement the other way, as those Unicorn who got weary of endless travel and trial were lured by the comfortable, indulgent safety of life in the Tarkhanate, with lavish estates and private harems, as Hulagu spared no expense to woo key leaders of Desert Moto who may have also held a grudge of ways Kublai ascended over Mongke. His greatest coup, however, was in 483 to convince Iuchi Kandagauri, daimyo of his family, to go on pilgrimage (hajj) from the Jewel to Aqahba. There, he held council with Grand Vizier Ide Mansuri, who convinced him to assume the position of the Grand Mufti in the blooming faith of the Lost Daughter, and move his seat to Aqahba. The construction of the Grand Mosque of the Fifth Wind was already under way. This was the dream of Iuchi Suasan was coming true, establishing a faith among the Unicorn that would always keep Lady Shinjo's legacy alive among them. While the more scholarly Iuchi, sahirs through and through less interested in religion and more in the research of the arcane, remained in the Jewel, the young and zealous ones soon joined the ranks of the new clergy in spreading the faith across the Tarkhanate and beyond.

The current agenda of the Unicorn as a whole is the endeavour that started after the meeting in 487 between Shinjo Kublai and a young travelling merchant from afar known as Saaji al-Hattar, claiming to have had some connection to the Ide. Kublai fancied the boy's stories and kept him in Khanbalik for weeks, learning much of the once-forsaken distant eastern land that could be reached by sailing west, becoming familiar with many things Hulagu may have withheld from him. In the end, Kublai took Saaji into his service and charged with overseeing the project he spared no copper and gold to complete ahead of the coming great kurultai. As the dream captured the imagination of many a Unicorn, Hulagu soon found himself joining with resources of his own so as not to lose out in the long-standing competition for leadership with the Shinjo Kaghan. And as the new century opens and the gathering of the Unicorn is imminent, it is nearing completion. With it, comes the moment of decision for the Unicorn. Shinjo Kublai, the Desert Wolf as they often call him, still in his prime, preserving the Ujik-hai ways and Lady Shinjo's line and legacy? Or Moto Hulagu, the Old Fox, the maker of the modern Unicorn empire, enfeebled by age but as cunning as ever, clinging to life and power to not let his numerous progeny unmake the work of his life before he secures it for good? The near future will tell.



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