The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

While Speaker tended to Cash’s wounds – which were grave, but very much possible for Speaker to mend – Shimmer explained her and Lilith’s story, well that was the plan evidently, but upon seeing Speaker she burst out crying. Evidently she had thought that the other Lunar had come to kill Speaker.

As Shimmer calmed down and Speaker wrapped up both Cash and his treatment of Cash, leaving the eclipse caste Solar’s face covered in glimmering stitches of essence as well as a new eye that was slowly but surely growing into place, plus a very sore shoulder, the circle moved inside the castle and assembled in one of the castles four tea rooms.

“I’m glad that you came back” Speaker said as everyone sat down. There hadn’t been much thought behind it, and it certainly didn’t sound very affectionate, but there wasn’t any malice in his voice either. He had missed her as a friend, nothing more – and Shimmer picked up on this quite acutely, but at the same time she clearly picked up on the message that he’d never wanted her to leave to begin with.

Wiping the last of her tears Shimmer confessed that after Sunrise had told to leave Chung Do on account of Speaker’s apparent change of heart and dissatisfaction with her, she had fled to the nearest ‘friendly’ Lunar enclave she knew of. It had been there she had learned that an elder Lunar, Lilith, had passed her in the opposite direction.

“Ok, and who the hell is this Lilith? She sure seemed to know me. She’s my Lunar mate, isn’t she?” Cash inquired inbetween short pained breaths. Shimmer nodded.

“Lilith is… famous, sort of, among the silver pact. I’m not sure if I’m the one who should tell you why, but lets just say that she’s not happy with you Cash – and that the fact that you’re still alive speaks volumes about her right now” Shimmer explained.

Speaker noted a curious flaw of a sort in Shimmer’s explanation: “Hold on. If she is Cash’s Lunar mate and has a grudge against him, or his past incarnation… wouldn’t that mean that she was alive during the usurpation for her to remember him like that?”

Shimmer sighed and nodded: “She’s one of the four oldest lunars in existence… and very powerful on account of that”
“ Ok, bad blood behind me and her, right – why did she force me to sanctify an oath never to learn that soul-spanning telepathy charm? Cash wondered.

Shimmer’s ear swiweled and folded back, her lip quivered ever so slightly, and her brows furrowed in a way that made Speaker think that they were shapeshifting into a more menacing form: “That charm… is pure evil. I can understand why she chose to have you promise never to learn that”

“And how is that bad? I thought it sounded really handy to have a telepathic connection – although it’d clearly work better if it was two-way. We were just trying to learn it to send you a message to come back home… I never wanted you to leave” Speaker noted.

Shimmer paused for a moment. Her gaze went from Cash to Speaker repeatedly: “If you can develop a charm that allows that every Lunar in creation will breathe a sigh of relief, that much I can promise you. Until then it is something I can only pray to Luna that you will all stay away from”

“I’m still not seeing why it’s such a ‘bad’ charm” Cash said, resting uncomfortably on a futon. His shoulder injury made it difficult to sit in any position that didn’t hurt.

“It’s obvious. It allows you to send any message, no matter how manipulative or cruel, straight to your Lunar mate – and they have no means to prevent you. It’s doesn’t sound much different from what I did to all the ponies here in the city” Sunrise explained, having entered the room just moments earlier.

Shimmer turned to face Sunrise – and turned into her monster-pony form: “You!” With a powerful leap Shimmer grabbed Sunrise in her talons and shook her violently. Sunrise had anticipated a reaction such as this and had armored herself with her charms, so she wasn’t harmed.

“Shimmer! Let her go!” Speaker shouted. Shimmer gave her Solar mate a look like a dog that didn’t want to let go of a toy it was having fun biting into, but Speaker was having none of it, so she put Sunrise down.

The circle quickly explained the events of last few weeks, including Sunrise’s fall from grace and subsequent penance: “If it wasn’t for Cash I wouldn’t even have been able to reconnect with the ponies here, but over the last week I’ve worked hard to make amends, still am. I’m… I’m sorry Shimmer. I wronged you so very much… if there is anything I can ever do to make it up to you” Sunrise said.

Shimmer closed her eyes and frowned momentarily, rubbing her brows with her talons: “Among Lunars we mark a debt owed with a circle carved into the flesh of the one who owes it. I’ll spare you that, but you Sunrise, you owe me big-time”
Sunrise nodded apologetically, humbly bowing her head so low that her ears touched the mosaic floor: “Anything”

Looking over at Speaker, Shimmer quickly noted: “She’s different…”

“Told you the bonds she’d put on her mind changed her. She’s her true self now” Speaker explained, feeling relieved that Shimmer had listened to him and put Sunrise down.

With things settled, at least as much as possible, the circle briefly celebrated that they were once again united by sharing a bottle of of the castle’s sake. After that they discussed the idea of fixing mane-shortage of the city. Shimmer found this to be quite amusing, and seemed greatly amused to regrow Sunrise Glow’s mane – leaving Sunrise with a huge and slightly curly orange head of hair that reached all the way down to the floor. The young shogun was also helped out in a similar albeit slightly more restrained fashion.

The next day Speaker, Shimmer and Sullen Hoof met in the medical laboratory where they began work on creating a potion that could mimic the effects of Shimmer’s body-altering charm, specifically so it could be distributed to the ponies of the city to regrow their manes. By nightfall they had nailed down the key alchemical factors needed and by the end of the week the city saw a boom in the hair-stylist industry. By that time Cash had also stopped wearing the eye-patch that Speaker had equipped him with, as his new eye had grown back, plus his wounds had fully healed. At Cash’s request Speaker also used his charms to remove any scars from the injuries.

With the city now fully restored the question was what next. Cash reminded the circle of the issue with the rebel nobles – for while the city was now whole and reinvigorated, it was still down to slightly less than half its original population, and while they did have enough food for the winter, then if the blockade around the city wasn’t broken come spring there would be trouble of the starving kind.

It was second month of the season of Air, the winds having already begun to cool as an early herald of the coming winter of water when the east would be blanketed in ice and show. Cash once again argued that the circle shouldn’t move against the rebel nobles until spring came at the end of the season of water, his logic being that by then the army that the nobles were training would be nice and ready for the circle to coopt and deploy against any outer threats facing the Chung lands – as Cash was certain that the neighboring territories and warlord holds south and west of the Chung lands were keeping tabs on what was happening, waiting to see if there was a moment of weakness for them to strike at.

“Ok, but what are we going to for the next… what, four months?” Red wondered, looking out over Chung Do from the windows in the banquet hall.

“Govern, adjudicate, be the rulers we once were – or at least practice for it” Cash idly mused.

Sunrise nodded: “It’ll take time for the ponies here to warm up to me again – I need to earn their trust again”

“Both sound reasonable – but if you’re open to it, then I have another idea: Meditative essence refinement” Speaker suggested.

Red frowned: “That’s some big words there, what do you mean?”

Speaker explained that this period of hopefully relative peace and quiet would be a great opportunity for everyone to purify their essence. It would allow them to learn powerful and complex charms, as well as improve their grasp of the essence within and around them. Red liked the idea of more powerful charms, while Cash was curious at what more complex charms he might learn. The circle ultimately agreed that this was a worthwhile pursuit, especially after Speaker added that the way that one did this was a very individual way – it simply required that each of them find an simple activity that matched them well and, ideally, was somehow iconic of their very nature.

“You know… I’ve actually begun finding doing paperwork kind of relaxing” Cash noted in relation to Speaker’s explanation.
Nodding, Speaker agreed: “Exactly. Refining your essence doesn’t have to mean sitting down all day and going ‘ohm’. If that was the case not even unicorns would have the time to refine their essence”

Shimmer added that her elders always suggested that Lunars who wanted to refine their essence venture into the wyld and meditate on the endless protean potential and change that was around them – but she’d also once spent five months as a seagull acting out purely her animal side and connecting with her instincts, purifying her essence that way: “The trick is simply not to think too much, because that muddies your essence flow. You want perfect balance and stillness of the mind”
And so it came to be that the circle spent the next several months on various meditative tasks. Cash would spend days slowly drafting legislation as if it was poetry, while Red trained with a zen-like patience on a series of wooden training dummies that Speaker had supplied her. Speaker spent his time operating a medical clinic, letting Shimmer handle all the ‘costumer relations’ and whatnot while he simply performed the healing that he loved to do.

Winter came as it had seemingly always done, at least as far as anyone currently alive in creation was concerened, with the howling of the windigos. These elemental s of chilling winds would race forth from their elemental courts in the north and herald the coming of the snow and ice as the bureau of heaven rotated its seasonal leadership to match the new season. Speaker would idly recall a time in the first age when the Solars controlled creation to the degree that even the weather and thus seasons only changed when allowed.

When the thaw came Speaker found that he missed the creation-wide winter wrap-up celebrations that he remembered so vividly. Cash couldn’t remember anything of what Speaker described, instead finding it more curious how Speaker’s geomantic architecture allowed things to grow within the city walls as if the winter wasn’t even there. It apparently meant that nearly everyone in the city had set up small gardens in large pots, with almost everything growing remarkably quickly. It had apparently helped lessen the effect of the blockade on the city – but there still wasn’t very much rice left.

The essence purification was difficult to gauge – one couldn’t simply plot the power of an exalted pony on a chart rating from one to ten, but the circle still felt their powers having noticeably improved around the last days of resplendent water, during some of the coldest days of the winters. This marked the end of the circle’s meditations. Speaker was also running out of timber to construct more training dummies for Red to smash.

Shimmer also reported that from her daily flights over the city, something she had begun a few weeks earlier to check for rebel activity nearer the city than the blockades, that scouting parties had begun camping closer to the city – no doubt looking for signs of survivors from the plague.

Cash convened the circle in the shogun’s war room, as now was time to plan how to finally deal with these troublesome nobles.

“Our first point of order should be food. We have three weeks worth of rice left in the granaries, and the blockades the farmers around the city aren’t being allowed to come here with the earliest shoots. Beyond that then I figure that a lot of the surrounding farms probably have large surplus stores on account of not having been able to sell their produce here, assuming that they’ve been able to preserve what they grew” Cash started.

Red was more interested in directly confronting the nobles, but Cash pointed out that even if they traveled to Birdstone, the capital of Daimyo Crane Lotus’s hold – where, if the original information they had gotten from the blockade they had smashed through when the circle had originally come to Chung Do, the rebel army was stationed – and brought the nobles to heel in a day, then it would still take a while to get recall orders around and open up the trade roads: “The city will starve before the usual flow of goods and food into the city opens up properly”

“Wow, you’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?” Shimmer said, sounding ever so slightly incredulous.

Cash gave the Lunar a somewhat tired glare: “For the last three months all I’ve done is numbers and seeing how they’ve kept shrinking, especially the numbers for Chung Do’s food supply. We have less than thirtyfour thousand sacks of rice left, and we eat about two thousand a day. You do the math”

“Oh I believe you, although if that’s the case wouldn’t that give us almost four weeks before the granaries run out?” Shimmer mused. Cash explained that his calculations factored in the hoarding and theft that were bound to start happening once word got out that there was less than a week’s worth of food left in the city. Shimmer conceded that she hadn’t thought of such events: “I’m more used to tribal island communities in the west where you just send a few boats out with nets or harpoons every day to bring home food – starvation isn’t really something you see very often there”

With Cash having impressed upon the circle the importance of shoring up the city’s food supply, the question became how. Cash suggested that they do it in combination with destroying the blockades: “That way we can open up the city in one fell swoop and hopefully be able to inform the surrounding farming communities that they can start showing up with their good on their own – that’ll speed up the whole process as well”

“Won’t the rebel daimyos simply send more troops to rebuild the blockades – and then lay proper siege to the city once they realize that we’re not dead from plague?” Red wondered.

Cash pointed to a map of the Chung lands, noting that the distance from Chung Do to Birdstone, if traveleld on hoof as – say – an army of ponies, would be a little over four to five days. Shimmer nodded and added that a siege had some very stringent logistical needs: “You need to be able to feed your army very well – but beyond that we have to remember something: When we first came here and came up to the northern villages to combat the Bodhisattva they said that the rebel daimyos had taken most of their produce. Now if I understand you right Cash, then Chung Do normally stores all the produce from the surrounding farming communities in its granaries, right? So where are the daimyo’s putting all the stuff that hasn’t come to Chung Do? I think what we need to look for is where they’ve set up stores and raid them – and I’ll bet that they’re set up not too far from the city in order to feed the blockade troops and later a siege”

“That would make sense from a military point of view – a siege is all about starving your opponent into surrendering” Speaker noted.

So it was decided that Shimmer would fly out to do some serious scouting. In a few days she had charted most of the surrounding lands, adding what she’d learned to the maps Cash was using. This yielded the locations of two blockades on the trade roads going east, as well as one on the western and the southern trade road. Shimmer also spotted the naval blockade that was holding back the river traffic trying to go to Chung Do south of the city.

“You mean there’s no river blockade north of the city?” Cash wondered, surprised that his foes had overlooked such an obvious means to resupply the city.

Red pointed out on the maps that the brown river terminated seven miles north of the city into four different creeks and streams that were too small to support merchant shipping: “The only boats that might have come from that direction would be farmers or fisherponies – and I’ve not seen a single one do that in the months we’ve been here, so whatever the nobles have done they’ve stopped that as well”

“All right, but these supply depots. Shimmer, you say they’re fortified barns with troops garrisoned around them? If we hit them we should be able to increase the city’s food supply to last long enough for the regular supply to resume, that way we’ll also be able to send a message to the nobles that we mean business and have the power to oppose them – then we go to Birdstone and pluck Daimyo Crane Lotus’s feathers” Cash noted.

While Red was all for finally taking the fight to the rebels she did have a few things to say first: “Hold on – we need to prepare properly for this fight”

Cash wasn’t sure what they needed to prepare for, firmly believeing that between everyone in the circle they had more than enough might to throw down these unruly nobles. Red wasn’t impressed: “Cash, a week ago you lost an eye and nearly bled to death. You need to learn a defensive charm before we go anywhere, and Shimmer didn’t scout out Birdstone so all your plans on how to deal with the nobles are based on guesswork. Now I agree that hitting these supply stations and blockades first is a good idea, and that when we do that we’ll have about as much as it takes for news of this to get to Birdstone and the nobles to organize a response which will most likely be marching their army on Chung Do – we should use that wisely. Equally we should take a few prisoners for interrogations when we go raiding the supply stations, for information”

“You know, you might say you don’t like to lead, but you’re sounding more and more like a general these days Red” Speaker mused. Red brushed off the comment saying that she was merely looking out for the plight of her people.

Thus the circle set about shoring up their abilities, Sunrise teaching Cash a defensive charm that Cash found extremely appealing to his sensibilities: It enhanced his abilities to sidestep attacks based on the power of his own ego: “I swear, it’s like this charm was made for me!”

“Perhaps, but you should test it first. Speaker and Red have been sparing in the courtyard while we’ve been training, go join them and see how the ego shield works.

In the castle courtyard Speaker and Red had been trading blows left, right and center for almost a week. Speaker had found the experience most satisfying, his sparing having revealed to him another technique for his unique martial style, one that Red had found extremely annoying. Cash emerged into the courtyard a scene of Speaker sitting on a small chair while Red was sweating profusely, dodging left and right while trying to keep her guards up, swearing like a sailor as Gift kept flying around her and trying to strike her – the technique that Speaker had found allowed him to override the feature in Gift that would make it return to him after hitting its target. Gift had been assailing Red for well over an hour.

“I swear I’m going to get you for this Speaker!” Red shouted as she swatted Gift away with a hoof wreathed in golden essence, only to have the bladed disc fly back at her a few seconds later.

Cash found the scene endlessly amusing as he approached Speaker: “She hasn’t tried to just catch the damned thing?”

“It doesn’t like being caught. The best she’s managed so far has been to smack it into the ground so it gets stuck, but that doesn’t even do much since Sully taught me a charm that works any thrown projectile free with ease” Speaker mused.

Cash explained his new fancy defensive charm, asking Speaker if he could get to test it. Speaker accepted Cash’s request: “Hey Red, take a breather”

Gift suddenly changed course and zoomed back to Speaker: “You may want to distance yourself a little”

Cash took a few steps backwards when Speaker suddenly threw Gift at him – but Cash, having activated his new charm seemed to not even have to try, Gift simply passing by him. Gift swerved, and tried again and again to hit Cash – all with the same result: Gift missed, not by a wide margin, but in none of the cases did it appear as if Cash even had to try to move out of the way.

Recalling Gift, Speaker nodded in approval: “Ok, that’s fairly impressive. I imagine this means that I won’t have to patch you up as much now?”

Cash laughed: “I should hope so”

During the time that most of the solar part of the circle had been training in preparation for the attacks on the supply stations Shimmer and Sullen Hoof had been scouting and infiltrating Birdstone. Shimmer, in the form of a local bird, had spent time trying to get an accurate read on the state of the rebel army, while Sullen Hoof had infiltrated castle Birdstone and learn everything possible about the rebel nobles and the possible deathknight that Heath Rose had warned them about. It had been agreed that the two would spend a week doing this, meaning that they returned via magic cloud a few days after Cash’s lessons in defensive essence use had concluded.

Having gathered in one of the castle’s tea salons, the circle and the young Shogun listened as Shimmer first told of her exploits: “We landed in the treetops of a forest north of the city so nobody would see the magic cloud descending and split up. I turned into a small bird and had a look at the army encampments. They’re stationed in a crescent around northern edge of the city, completely blocking the main road to Chung Do. I checked the quartermaster’s ledgers and they’re at least buying enough food to feed some seven thousand ponies daily. Looking at their drills and exercises it was clear that the vast majority of the soldiers are levied farm-ponies who’ve never held a spear in their hooves before, although it was clear that some of the older troops had gone through the motions before”

“Makes sense. Father used to have the daimyo’s levy troops often for whatever was needed” the young Shogun said.
“Do they look ready for battle? Were they well-fed?” Speaker wondered.

Shimmer explained that while the food they were serving to the troops was bland, then it was plentiful: “I’m guessing that a lot of what would usually go to feed Chung Do has been diverted to the army. As for battle-readiness, then it’s a mixed lot. Most of the army is just levied militia, armed with not much more than spears and some very simple leather barding, but from what I overheard their officers talk about then the army is chiefly there for the numbers, not for usefulness. They don’t seem to expect much of a fight for Chung Do, but they want to be able to brag about having a big army to ward off enemies outside the Chung lands”

Cash was disappointed that the army itself wasn’t much use, but could see the logic that the Daimyos were using.

What Sullen Hoof had to tell was a bit more dire: “When I first got into the city as a traveling mendicant I ran across a very sad sijaneese mortician at a tavern. He was drowning his sorrows in some local swill that tasted like crap, and told me in between sobs that he’d been fired…”

“Why would you fire a mortician? What are they doing with their dead?” Red wondered, her voice clearly giving away the fact that she really didn’t want her question answered.

Sullen Hoof sighed: “The mortician didn’t know – but said that for the last several months there’s been no funerals in Birdstone – and all ponies in and around the city are now required by decree from the Daimyo to deliver their dead to the castle”

“Zombie army?” Speaker wondered. The worried looks in the light from the flickering fireplace showed that he wasn’t the only one thinking something along that line.

Sullen Hoof shook his head and gestured for the others to calm down: “No, nothing like that. In the castle basement and dungeons I found all the corpses. Yes they’ve been animated, and a lot of them were falling apart, but they seemed mostly to be doing menial labor and busywork. When I looked around in the castle proper there weren’t that many zombie servants walking around – from what I could hear from the other nobles staying there, then some of the found the practice quite upsetting…”

“If Daimyo Crane is that far in bed with the deathknights that he’s letting them raise his dead as servants… good grief” Red mused, not really sure what to make of this revelation.

Going through his notes, Sullen Hoof added – with on small amount of disgust: “The discussion I heard on that ended when another pony suggested that the noble who didn’t like the zombie servants talk to someone called Typhon. Apparently he’s the pony who’s ‘organized’ the zombie ponies, and he’s the one who’s somehow convinced almost all the other nobles of accepting undead labor. They apparently like the idea of serfs and peasants that can’t rebel and are unquestioningly loyal”
“Did you kill anyone while at it?” Speaker asked hesitantly. It was clear from how Sullen Hoof had described the notion of converting one’s servants into undead zombie-slaves that he found the idea revolting – and knowing Sullen Hoof’s aspirations of punishing the greedy and powerful for their abuses against the weak, then it certainly wasn’t unlikely that Sullen Hoof had done something like that.

Shaking his head dismissively, Sullen Hoof’s expression soured: “No, but I know which ones I will if we don’t find a way to make them all renounce this madness. If they’re under the mind-control of a deathknight then I might give them a pass… but if not”

“Very well – did you learn anything else while in the castle?” Cash wondered. Sullen Hoof noted that most of the nobles there seemed to have arrived over the last few weeks, so they were probably gathering in anticipation for a final assault on Chung Do. Shimmer said that with what she’d heard the army officers say, then all they were waiting for was word back from their advanced scouting parties, the ones she’d seen camp around the city, looking for ways in to check if there’s any pony left.

“Do we have anyone on the walls?” Cash wondered, as that would show that there was still a military presence in the city. Cash shook his head.

“They also knew about the fire – the blockades had seen the smoke” Shimmer added.

Taking a deep breath, Speaker floated his tea-cup down to the table and stood up: “Then I think it’s time we open up the city. Lets hit the supply posts and blockades tomorrow – all of them. We can do a sweep east first, then one west, then one south down the river”

“If we’re assaulting the river blockade, could we try to take whatever ships they’re using intact?

Red craned her neck and looked up at the vine-line carvings of the wood paneling on the ceiling: “What about prisoners? If we slaughter all the ponies at the blockades there’ll be none left to run back to their masters and tell of our exploits”

“Spoken as a true mercenary –but you’re right: We should actually ensure that some ponies escape from what we do tomorrow. It’ll send a powerful message back to the nobles and that’ll give us a better position to negotiate from when we go visit them next, say… a week later. That’ll give the survivors from our raids time to report what happened, and it’ll let the nobles stew for a few days” Cash said gleefully, sounding eager to boldly go forth and buck some flank.

Speaker shrugged: “Well, that sounds reasonable. As for prisoners, then we know enough about their numbers and readiness – we don’t really need any more information – but at the same time I think it’ll also send a strong message if we simply rush and wreck the blockades without necessarily killing any pony there. Let them know that we are powerful but also merciful – that’ll make it easier to convince the soldiers to accept our command once we take over. If they only know us as ‘those ponies who killed all our friends’ they’ll be less cooperative”

“That makes sense – plus if we have to hunt down every pony at each blockade it’ll start getting boring. I’ve been part of raids back when I was a merc where my orders were to hunt down entire tribes of wyld mutants – that gets boring fast if you’re looking for that single one who got away” Red said, sounding quite comfortable with talking about the fact that she’d been part of slaughtering a whole tribe of mutated ponies. Shimmer gave Red a disapproving glare.