The Tome of Exalted Ponies

The seafaring hero stylist leads a pirate raid against the port of soup, and makes off with all the soup on his ship.

…

With the final rail pillar set up in the foothills of the summer mountains, construction of the network became much easier, as the jungles receded and let Sand’s Jackals properly aid the Sunhill construction crews.

With the stone and gem-carvers back in Sunhill sending pillar segments and the crystal anchors for the pillar tops via the network, the circle no longer needed to assist the effort directly, permitting them to finally mount up and head west at speed.

Sand thanked the circle and Lee profusely, saying with the rail network reaching his people, then his grand plans of challenging the guild’s stranglehold on trade in the south could finally be realized. The lords of Sunhill were quite pleased to aid in this, Cash thinking that with this new and much faster trade route from the deep south to the heart of the east, then the guild would have to stop hounding Sunhill and instead accept their existence, that they might finally be permitted to have their own legions of merchants move goods through the network.

Flying across the dune sea of the deep south was quite an ordeal. Sand had said that with the rail network connecting his jackal settlements, he would finally be able to move fresh water around quickly and easily, the circle in kind quickly learning that even when flying at the greatest of speeds, then the heat of the south was merciless – and the stores of fresh water they had brought were quickly drained.

Only being able to fly during the night, for the far south was scorching during the day, it took the circle three precarious days to cross the glitterflame-desert – the endless molten dune sea close the pole of fire, and by the second day they were all quite thirsty – well, Cash and Sullen Hoof were, for Speaker and Sunrise both had the right elemental immunity charms to enable them to completely ignore the oppressive heat they were passing through.

“Good heavens… look at that” Cash said, pointing south on their hopefully last night in the deep desert while Speaker worked his crafting charms to shape the surrounding sand into a quite opaque glass dome over them, that they might shelter under it to escape the burning heat of the day.

Cash was pointing to the eternal fires of the south, where molten sands gave way to pure elemental fire. It looked quite beautiful, hauntingly so, the light sparkling in the red jade dusts blowing in on hot winds.

The following night the circle started seeing lights in the horizon. Based on their navigation they knew it to be Gem… though as they approached, they could clearly see that there was a lot more activity there: It was a grand siege.

Sullen Hoof leapt down from the yeddim on high, returning shortly thereafter, reporting that it was quite the coalition that had assembled to retake Gem: Realm forces from the Lap, Saddle-Arabians from Chiaroscuro, even forces from Paragon and the Varang city states: “…but most telling of all was that I was approached by this sidereal who introduced himself as Nazri, said that Speaker and Shimmer know him”

Speaker perked up at the mention of the southern sidereal. He remembered him well from having effectively saved them from Anys Syn earlier during Speaker’s journey to bring Shimmer back: “Well, what did Nazri have to say?”

“That it’s a shit-show down there. The demons are quite content holding Gem, building their forces there and slowly corrupting the essence flows of the place utterly – though, he basically also confirmed what you Lee said, saying that the demons have begun mining and road-building towards the north-west, not really splitting their forces, but preparing for an exodus…”

Lee sighed, looking tempted in the dim light of the lit caste marks to simply leap down into Gem and start slaughtering demons: “I’m guessing from your tone that the demons splitting their forces won’t change much – they’re legion, and I’m guessing they’re summoning just as many daily”

“That’s what Nazri said. He was being very busy organizing the few other Sidereals under his care to keep the siege coalition together, and keep the demons from infiltrating and corrupting its generals – he probably won’t mind getting some help, which begs the questions…” Sully said, looking at the rest of the circle with his unstated inquiry.

Sunrise nodded: “If we should down-prioritize An Teng and focus on Gem instead?”

“I say we stay the course. I know it sucks, but based on what Speaker said, then if we do not aid An Teng, then Bitter Copal and the other half-demon mutants we sent to help him would ultimately just summon their own demon armies and swarm the place… turning it into a second Gem spread out over a much larger region. That would be much worse” Cash pointed out, speaking as if he had given the topic a fair bit of thought.

Lee reluctantly agreed, the circle nodding just the same.

Flying off, the circle arrived at the outskirts of the southern-most An-Teng jungle fortresses a bit before noon – now that the circle had cleared the desert, it was possible for them to fly during the daytime.

“Alright Lee, where are we supposed to make contact with this demon worshiping cult?” Cash inquired, not sounding terribly keen on simply flying into the nearest city of An Teng and landing in the middle of the place – the local realm garrison might take offense and whatnot.

Using the correspondence that Lee had received, the dawn caste solar was able to guide Cash in steering the flying yeddim low in over the jungles, so that they stayed well out of sight of the realm garrisons fortifying the southern stretch of An Teng lands.

“Say, what are they defending against here? The jungles south of An Teng are largely unclaimed lands, aren’t they?” Cash wondered.

Lee went through his notes: “The… here we go, the silent crescent tribes of the Banyan jungles aren’t all that nice towards tengeese expansion, but I’ll be honest… based on what little I could see when we flew near the last of those fortresses, then it looks like those jungle tribes have been on the war path recently. Maybe something is riling up the jungle natives?”

“Could be the demon army pushing in from the mountains in the south-east” Speaker noted, imagining terrified tribals trying to migrate away from incoming demon outriders.

Lee and the circle agreed that such sounded quite likely.

Some distance outside of what Lee’s map said was the city of Prosperous Garden, far enough that the thick jungles obscured them well, Lee guided the circle to land at a small and isolated village of buildings built on stilts – ostensibly due it being in a river valley that would flood every season of water.

Looking around, Sullen Hoof quickly spotted fresh tracks down in the mud that led him to a cave entrance… but there was nobody there, only a small boat and some hunting gear, with its owner ostensibly off hunting in the surrounding jungle – not much of a welcoming committee.

“Lee, you’ll have to forgive me – but I expected us to be able to meet someone here” Cash mused, looking out over the village from atop the yeddim howdah.

With a frown, Lee quickly went through his correspondence: “Where is it… where is… here – we’re to hide away whatever means we arrived in, maybe used one of the barns, and then wait for nightfall”

Doing as instructed, the circle found a dilapidated barn that Speaker quickly repaired, the giant yeddim first fitting inside after Speaker had used his singing staff to raise the foundations of the barn, so that it was no longer on stilts – but stood solid on a small hill of earth and stone.

In passing the time until nightfall, the circle and Lee explored the seemingly abandoned village. Whatever had caused the place to be abandoned had happened in an orderly fashion: There wasn’t anything of value left behind, only barebones wooden structures. It was Sullen Hoof who spotted the wooden plaque nailed to the village’s public house: “Hey, what’s written here?”

Lee had prepared for the journey by learning seatongue, but Cash beat Lee and Speaker to the well: “It says that the village was ordered abandoned by the imperial satrap, after repeated outbreaks of disease – it also warns anyone reading this to get out and not drink the water here”

Speaker gave the well a suspicious look, examining the local river water with his medical charms: “There is no disease in this…”

“Well of course not, but we had to come up with some kind of excuse to have this place cleared out” a somewhat familiar voice said.

Everyone turned to see… someone who couldn’t really be seen: The transparent flesh of her body made Ashi of Six Wheels, the demon-bonded pony the circle had met a while ago at Lee’s office in Greatforks, difficult to spot at first glance.

Lee instantly moved to greet the demon-pony, Ashi greeting him in kind: “Good to see you – but I’m not seeing the army you promised us”

“I brought something better – I brought the lords of Sunhill, they have taken on several armies on their own and won – and can help train one up here” Lee replied enthusiastically.

Ashi guided everyone to an underground hideout dug under the village. It was cleverly hidden, using strong sorcerous illusions to cover the entrance. The hideout turned out to be surprisingly vast, being part weapons arsenal, stockpile and underground summoning facility.

In the great meeting hall, ventilated by the distant flapping of great demon insects, and lit by glowing demons crawling along the ceiling, the circle, Lee and the newly recently formed coven of demon-bonded ponies met for the first time.

Here the circle was introduced to Bitter Copal and the rest of the demon-bonded ponies, though they now went under a different moniker: For while the three that the circle had helped get to Bitter Copal hadn’t really gotten the full formal training and indoctrination that their would-be demon masters had envisioned, then Bitter Copal had – even though he wasn’t exactly a demonic loyalist anymore, which had allowed them to check each other’s notes so to say, allowing them to formally introduce themselves as “Green Sun Princes” to the circle.

“Oh, that’s just great…” Speaker couldn’t help but comment.

Cash raised an eyebrow at Speaker: “Come now, we’ve met abyssals who reeked of death and helped them no problem”

Explaining the moniker’s implications in that it would essentially make them demonic nobles, beholden to the lord of all demons, Malfeas – who’s fetish soul was Ligier the Green Sun – Speaker struggled to understand how the yozis had made their own exaltations, but then again they were peers to Autochton, and probably had abyssal exaltations to reference.

It was the purple coated Shirin, her eyes pure black orbs and her teeth sharp needles, who quickly perked up at hearing Speaker say that: “You could also call us warlocks – that’s a term used a lot by the demons back in Malfeas for us… but we know how our exaltations came to be – the yozis loved to gloat over how they got that done and tell that tale”

The whole circle and Lee listened close, as Shirin explained that after the usurpation – when dragonblooded legions had trapped the solar exaltations in a container made of malfean porcelain, the shadow of all things, the Ebon Dragon, conspired with the neverborn: “He struck a bargain, being able to track the malfean porcelain container… for it was an undead deep-sea monster that broke it – and while they had hoped to grab all of the exaltation shards for themselves, then they couldn’t…”

“And good thing they didn’t – but how did the yozis then corrupt the shards they got?” Sunrise wondered.

Shirin stroked her many brass piercings: “Who knows – but once the yozis got the shards, the conspirators split them between them and corrupted them… and then started finding hosts, like us”

The semi-transparent Ashi sighed: “And who knows what their criteria for selecting us were – they weren’t looking for heroes, that’s for sure”

Sullen Hoof found that statement to be quite odd: “What do you mean?”

Diminutive demon servants served drinks in cups made from brown firmin resin, while Ashi presented her theory: “Well, Bitter Copal was chosen after having his leg chopped off, left for dead in the ocean – the rest of us weren’t in that much better a situation… well, Fallen Twin might be the odd one out, but even then… none of us were chosen at any moment of glory”

The circle recalled the story that the burly and brawny Fallen Twin had told them back in Lee’s office, about how his twin had originally been chosen as a green sun prince, but he had sacrificed himself and somehow ensured that his twin brother would get the demonic exaltation instead. Twin nodded: “It was the only way he could ensure that the magical indoctrination he was getting wouldn’t corrupt me… he could feel himself slipping – agreeing more and more with the demon’s plans for conquering and corrupting creation”

“Same for all of us – we realized that the demonic taint we had already gotten was bad enough, and what they were putting in our heads would only make things worse – and none of it would ever help Creation” Ashi chimed in.

With that particular topic settled, Bitter Copal called attention to himself by reshaping his mutagenic replacement limb – the leg he had gotten as a replacement for the one cut off – as he reshaped it from that for a normal pony limb, to a crab-limb with a giant claw. The sound of the shapeshifting was sickening, with joints snapping and popping, and new growths of thick crab shell covering the limb.

“You wanted to say something?” Twin commented, not sounding even remotely phased or intimidated by the display.

Bitter Copal sighed, speaking in a very broken rivertongue: “You said that Lee would bring an army – instead he brought us solars… how will this help us?”

Lee quickly replied: “We will train an army out of the locals – that was part of your plan anyway, wasn’t it? To show creation that the tengese are strong enough to fight their own battles, and win their own freedom?”

Copal nodded begrudgingly: “We’ve tried that… they’re too tired, too over-worked. The Satrap is hoarding rice and demanding greater and greater shares of the harvest – soon the tengese will be too hungry to fight”

“Sounds like you need someone to help teach them some more efficient ways to do their work – which is exactly why Lee brought us along” Cash stated confidently.

The coven of green sun princes thus listened, as Lee and the circle presented their plan. It was vague and had of broad strokes – and the circle knew this, but as a preliminary plan it wasn’t that bad: First the circle would infiltrate the major cities of An Teng, to get a read on the situation. In doing this, the local community leaders of the tengese would be identified and targeted for night time visits.

Speaker had brought a sack full of loaded dream-catchers, each with a dream wrought by the goddess Dreamer of Dreams of Victory, one of the three ruling gods of Great Forks. These dreams would be implanted into the tengese community leaders, subtly influencing them into being more accepting for resisting imperial rule – as well as being more open to spreading that message.

“Not a bad plan – put those dreams into the grandmothers of the royal houses and we’ll be halfway done already” Bitter Copal mused.

The next step would be to visit each of these dream-gifted places and having Cash work his charms, ideally to free up workers that could then be spirited off to training camps where Lee and Speaker would train them with their solar military training charms.

Meanwhile, Sullen Hoof would identify key targets in the satrap’s administration – something that the coven had already worked on, so that list wouldn’t take long to finish.

Finally, when it was time to strike, then Twin, Sunrise, Speaker and Lee would each lead tengese troops at key targets, while Copal would be on standby with a legion of summoned sesseljae demons – the stomach bottle bugs, which can mend flesh as easily as they can swim through it, to heal the wounded. Sully and Ashi would carry would kidnappings of family members of key administration officials, to ensure their cooperation during the transition government – and that… that should be it.

This idea of four simultaneous strikes against key targets the coven found quite fitting, for the four largest cities of An Teng were prime targets, so that part of the plan fit perfectly with the reality of the situation. However, one aspect of the plan that the coven wasn’t entirely pleased with was the circle’s steadfast opinion that realm forces should be allowed to leave in peace, assuming that they could be made to stand down – Bitter Copal wanted the realm oppressors to suffer: “I want blood in the streets for the millennia of oppression we’ve endured!”

“And that will impress An Teng’s neighbours how? The realm certainly won’t think highly of you, if you do that – it would make you no better than the arczeckh horde back east, or the lintha pirates here west, and both are put down like wild animals whenever caught” Cash quickly argued, not at all being shy of tugging at Copal’s obvious desire for his people to gain the respect it deserved.

Bitter Copal seethed for a moment, but then composed himself: “Very well… but you cannot enter tengese cities looking like you do. Ashi, you’re good with disguises – help them”

Sullen Hoof’s disguise charms handled his cover just fine, but for Cash, Speaker and Sunrise it was a bit more tricky: The average tengese pony looked very similar to that of the natives of the blessed isle: Flat black manes, and eyes with that distinctive extra fold – Speaker’s mane could somehow pass for that of an old tengese stallion, but it was difficult to alter his eyes – same for Cash and Sunrise.

Cash was indeed a bit confused at why he couldn’t just pretend to be a foreign merchant – but Ashi quickly shut down his idea: “If you don’t want to squint all the time, then the best we can do is dress you up as river-folk… but nobody trusts them either, so you wouldn’t exactly be that much better off”

“I still don’t see why we can’t present ourselves as foreign merchants – that works just fine back home” Cash mused,

Ashi shook her head and sighed – her semi-transparent form jiggling: “The satrap and the legion garrison commander both monitor all ships that come in. There are no over-land trade routes to Gem or the Lap from An Teng – you would have to come in via ship, not appear out of nowhere inland. It would be a mess to have to forge you travel papers everywhere you go”

“Please, you don’t think we can fly out to a merchant ship that will soon come to an An Teng port, and convince the captain and crew that we were along the ride from the Lap?” Cash admonished, not terribly impressed with the warlock’s lack of imagination.

Bowing her head, Ashi conceded, saying that doing so would solve the problem of getting the circle legitimately into An Teng from Port of Dragon’s Jaw – and from there they could travel down the river of queens to the city of Salt-Founded Glory where the lowland prince lives, and from there further in the river delta to the City of the Steel Lotus, seat of Satrap Ragara Soras Jor’s residence and administration. Futher up the river would then be Prosperous Garden where the midlands prince resides, Adorned with Wisdom as a Saphire and finally Jade Plum Citadel where the highland prince lives.

“Ok… so we go to these places and dream-seed the elders of the royal households, great. We still need to find ponies to form an army” Sunrise commented.

Ashi motioned for the circle to follow, leading to another room, one lit with strange green-flamed candles, lined with racks of barrels and shelfs with bottles: “Wait here a moment”

Shirin arrived not long after, telling Ashi that Fallen Twin was keeping Copal busy at the arsenal testing the latest batches of spears.

“Good grief – keeping him busy? What is going on here!?” Cash flat out stated, annoyed that he wasn’t able to get a read from the two warlocks with his charms of social cue detection.

Shirin first tensed up, then slouched, emitting a tired groan: “Do you have any idea how difficult it has been to reign in Biter Copal?”

“If he is a hardline nationalist and would-be militant patriot as Speaker told us, difficult I assume” Sullen Hoof said, happy to sense that more pieces to the puzzle his profiling charms had left him were about to be revealed.

Ashi agreed: “Oh you have no idea. Look, Copal would love nothing more than to swarm all of An Teng with demons to liberate it from the realm – but he also wants An Teng to be recognized as more than just submissive minions…”

“We know – Speaker told us of this demonic implanted urge” Sunrise chimed in.

Shirin floated out one of the bottles from the shelves, bit the cork off with her needle teeth and then chugged half the content of the bottle in one go: “He is obsessed… and the three of us have been working very hard to keep that under control while also working on fermenting the actual rebellion – that’s part of why our progress has been so slow”

“Yes, about that – I would have thought that the four of you would have made a lot more progress than just dig out an underground complex here” Lee said, not sounding happy that he had to state the obvious, but he also wasn’t terribly impressed.

The two warlorcks both agreed that progress had been slow. Ashi lamented: “We can’t exactly show ourself in public… and quite frankly the three of us are not all that keen at learning more demonic charms, which seriously hinders what our options are”

Sunrise approached Shirin, putting a calming hoof on the purple pony’s shoulder: “Not learning charms? That’s… why would you not use your powers?”

Ashi threw off her robes, revealing her gelatinous looking semi-transparent body: “This is why! We look like freaks already! None of us can parade around in public unless we use charms to disguise ourselves – and if we try to learn more potent charms… well… let’s just say that learning the ways of demons makes you all the more amicable to the ways demons do things”

“I take it that Copal has less of an inhibition with this regard?” Speaker asked, finally getting the big picture.

The two warlocks nodded, Shirin passing the bottle to Ashi who emptied it. Shirin elaborated: “A lot of the infernal charms we can learn – and oh there are so many – change you. To internalize and learn them, you have to fundamentally alter your own essence to make them work. You can gain great power, but the price is that you’re not really a pony anymore”

“We know the god of exaltation, Lytek, personally – I’m sure he would love to have a crack at helping you. The exaltations in you were originally solar shards, that much I can tell. We’ve found a reliable way to redeem and purify abyssal exalted, the undead deathknights – no reason we can’t help you just the same” Speaker said, wanting desperately to help.

Shirin and Ashi welcomed the offer, saying that Fallen Twin would likely accept it just the same – though they were weary, for the circle was honest enough to say that to their knowledge Lytek had never worked on an infernal exaltation before. Shirin stated the obvious: “We would prefer not to be the first test subjects for such a process, I hope you can understand”

“Completely. Let’s get this rebellion rolling, shall we? Sunrise, we’ll need a cloud and a ride out to sea – should be in a generally north-western direction from there” Cash quickly stated, sounding eager to – if nothing else – wrap this whole mess up, before Copal ended up doing something stupid.

Lee offered to remain, to assist in handling Copal – but also to get to know him better: “As righteous as his cause is, I need to know if he’s more of a risk than an asset to it – I can also help judge the infernal charms that everyone here seems worried about, considering my own experience with being corrupted by darkness”

“Oh… he’s still useful – we’ve made sure that he never delved into any charm sets that would corrupt him wholly – and it’d be nice to have an outsider’s view on thing” Shirin said, whatever she had chugged finally starting to take effect on her.

The circle thus prepared to leave. During their preparations they got a quick list of the things that Bitter Copal and the rest of the coven had managed to set up: The underground facility they were in wasn’t unique – far from it. There were underground staging grounds set up all over An Teng, well out of sight of the realm’s secret police or the realm garrison. Each had demons bound there, manufacturing weapons of the highest quality from steel-hardened firmin resin. All that was needed was an actual army to use the weapons.

Flying off and spotting a ship sailing under a chiaroscuro merchant flag wasn’t hard. Making the captain and crew ‘remember’ the circle having boarded near the Lap, was even easier.

After that it was several days of slow travel as the ship neared Dragon Mouth Bay. It gave the circle plenty of time to reflect on what they had learned so far.

“So… bug people east of the summer mountains, and a demon cult rebellion brewing west of the fire mountains. Good grief” Sullen Hoof summarized, sounding almost amused by the bizarre situation.

Cash found himself agreeing: “Could be worse… but I will say, Speaker your assessment of him wasn’t far off. A desperate and bitter nationalist who wants his people free – no matter the cost…”

“Even if it costs him his people?” Sullen Hoof commented, before Speaker could get a word in.

Speaker couldn’t help but nod to Sully’s comment, adding: “And now a circle… or coven… mainly trying to reign him in from doing anything stupid. I guess we arrived just in time to prevent something truly terrible from happening”

“Absolutely. But it doesn’t chance our plans – the dream implants are still our best bet to manipulate the royal houses, we just have to figure out who to target. That’ll be up to Sully, then we just need to get Speaker in near them for the dream finagling” Sunrise said, though at the end of her sentence she appeared suddenly lost in though.

Cash instantly spotted Sunrise’s distracted expression: “What is it?”

“The shoreline… I think I remember it, from the first age. The shape of it, I’m sure… but it’s still so different” Sunrise said, trying to sort out her memories.

Speaker agreed, saying that he recalled a great and prosperous An Teng – and that the coastline of it was very different: “The alluvial soil of the coast lands used to crank out five crops a year – that’s on par with the blessed isle in terms of productivity”

Sullen Hoof pointed out the obvious: “I am not seeing anything even remotely like that from here… I’m seeing mangrove swamps and…” taking a strong sniff: “…brackish marshes – that’s not anything you can grow food crops in”

“I’m just going to guess that the shogunate couldn’t quite maintain the first age agricultural infrastructure the solar deliberative set up here… the great contagion probably didn’t help either” Speaker said, shuddering at the thought of how much work it would be to restore such farmlands.

Several days later, the ship pulled into the Port of Dragon’s Jaw. The circle disembarked and found lodgings for traveling foreigners, and spent a few days in town to get a read of the place – and scout out of the fortress where the realm garrison is set up. Sully handled the fortress, quickly reporting that the commander was a house Ledaal unicorn who seemed to be mainly focused on earning money via setting business with local merchants and preventing the house Ragara satrap from doing much of anything.

“Amazing… anything else?” Cash groaned, poking at his food in the restaurant they were eating in.

Sullen Hoof smirked – the illusory disguise he had on via his magical mask making him look like a perfectly generic tengese pony, with the flat black mane and extra eye folds: “The legion stationed here is barely half strength, commanded by a General Ledaal Shuri, known as Shuri the Scarlet – and that’s it, that’s all the realm has here… well, officially – depending on how many realm unicorns are here hiding from the civil war, there’s no telling what kind of personal retainers they brought with them”

“And we won’t learn any of that here – Dragon’s Jaw is for storing, loading and unloading bulk goods – all the merchants whose goods are being loaded here operate out of Salt-Founded Glory, further up the river delta. The only point of interest here is the legion coastal fortress” Cash noted, sounding quite disappointed with what he’d learned.

Sunrise smirked at Cash, leaning in order the table: “Well then you clearly weren’t looking at the right places: I visited the local temples, spoke to the priests and monks… I learned a lot of things”

“I’m surprised you got anything out of the locals – the coven was right about how good the tengese are at stonewalling foreigners” Cash noted.

Quickly checking to see if anyone was looking at them, then turning her attention back to the circle, Sunrise explained: “I talked to the local immaculate monks, they were from the isle. They’re not terribly happy you know… turns out that despite centuries of immaculate preachers running themselves ragged here, then the tengese still worship the Golden Lord and the Pale Mistress – sure, they’ll pray to the dragons, or pretend to… but the monks said that it’s an open secret that every tengese pony prays to these two gods – and in a lot of places the temples to those two are much bigger than the immaculate temples, if there even is one and not just a shrine”

“That fits with what we’ve heard about tengese quiet defiance” Sullen Hoof noted.

Sunrise agreed, adding: “It’s more than that – the monk I got talking to was quite tired, easy to milk for information. He said that while he rarely does so, then all of An Teng listens when the Golden Lord speaks to them. He apparently shows himself to the three princes that rule An Teng once every decade or so, and it’s been eleven years since he last revealed himself”

“Oh… a god sanctioned uprising – that sounds like something we could use” Cash said, sounding very intrigued.