Agathon's Findings
(Transcript of Judge Magistrate Chuzei Amilar Agathon concluding judgement in the court-martial of five Chuzei accused of divers high crimes and misdemeanors)
"...In rendering judgement on this matter, there are two separate set of events which must be clearly separated, as befitting a Judge Magistrate's role as both an officiant of military justice who must rule on matters of command and insubordination, and as an arbiter concerning the loyalty and upright conduct of individuals who have been exalted in the eyes of the Earth and who trace their allegiance to the Shogunate of Lookshy through oaths of fealty.
"In the former role, in regards to the charges of insubordination and conduct unbecoming, I hereby find the accused not guilty as charged. Numerous witnesses have been called and testified to Taizei Fuo Bahari's state of extreme intoxication; under such circumstances, it is entirely appropriate for a Chuzei to refuse his Taizei's orders where the Chuzei's unclouded judgement finds such orders to be contrary to the principles of an upright soldier. Further, the fact that the same situation would not have permitted such right of refusal were the Taizei not intoxicated has no bearing on this case.
"In fact, it is this court's determination that a separate tribunal shall be called within the week to bring Bahari up on charges of drunken disorderliness and conduct unbecoming.
"To the lesser charge of posession of foreign spiritual propaganda without writ of approval from the Theologic Ministry of the Directorate of Information, I hereby find the accused guilty as charged. The accused themselves admit that they purchased a copy of a text entitled 'Principia Tactica Et Spiritus of the First Marukani Legion' while stationed in Celeren. The accused then brought the text back when Taisei Bahari's unit was reassigned from the Marukan Redoubt back to garrison duties in Lookshy proper. The text is attributed to one "Sixteenth Son", a known art-name of an acknowledged Forsaken-type Anathema more commonly known by the sobriquet "Nameless Ravine". In the absence of any aggravating conduct, posession of such materials without writ is normally punishable by two days in the stockade, twenty hours of remedial classes in spiritual discipline, and two weeks' reduction in pay, with no reduction in rank.
"However, these are not the charges that most of the assembled soldiers, officers, and dignitaries are gathered to hear. The most serious charges, of mutiny, conspiracy, and high treason, are accusations of the highest order; accordingly, they demand that I shift to my second role, that of Arbiter of Virtue. While many in the bureaucracy have pressed me to make a swift determination, and have criticized this agency publicly and privately for taking fully four weeks to perform findings of fact, it is my position that the seriousness of the accusations warrant an extraordinary degree of due diligence, a luxury that Lookshy's current peacetime footing affords me.
"Before I pronounce my judgement, I will first outline the circumstances and findings of this court; it is my wish that all who stand here today might understand the truth of the matter, that they may all serve as agents of clarity and wisdom to counter the frankly deplorable rumors that presently circulate throughout the court of public opinion.
"Setting aside the issue of the text's author - a matter for which a guilty verdict has already been established - and setting aside the issue of any other propaganda texts that may or may not have originated from the same author - for no such texts have been unearthed in this investigation - this court is left with two items to review, the first being the subject matter of the text in question, and the second being the actions and character of the accused.
"The text was brought to the accused's attentions shortly after Marukani forces led by an Anathema cadre repelled an invasion by the hill-tribes to the east. The magnitude of the victory was stunning, far exceeding that of any known military action by the Marukani. Popular reports of the victory are inflated by both common tavern boasts and by a skilled propaganda campaign on the part of the Anathema; however, this court has had access to unbiased eyewitness accounts of the conflict. Taisei Amilar Amaki was stationed at the manse known as the Plum Blossom Retreat as part of a group of military observers, and her testimony speaks of a remarkable degree of skill and discipline on the part of both the trained legions and irregular levys who participated in the engagement. The text was purportedly the training manual that was used to forge the fractious free clans into an organized fighting force, and this aroused the curiousity of the accused; they acquired the text hoping to learn how the Anathema had accomplished such a feat of logistics.
"The text itself bears no charms to skew the reader's mind. Our diplomatic archives include several letters penned by Nameless Ravine's hand directly; we have compared the text to these letters and have confirmed that the it was not penned by its Anathema author; rather, it appears to be a mass-distribution copy, written by a scribe whose calligraphy is functional and unadorned. If the text itself poses a threat, that theat must be intellectual rather than supernatural. Having established that the accused were not acting under a mental compulsion, we must then examine the content of the text.
"The text is first and foremost a treatise on martial philosophy. It outlines a soldier's daily regimen, the basic principles of obedience and martial righteousness, as well as a primer on tactics, history, and theology. Save for the theological portions, the text itself is is an insightful and coherent distillation of a dozen well known older texts, many of which are used by Lookshy's own training forces. The book goes beyond mere summary, however; it emphasizes the commonalities and linkages between the source texts, infusing them into a remarkably readable and accessible work expressed in clear, bold language suitable for consumption by a semi-literate audience.
"The theological portions of the text are largely devoted to reinforcing a soldier's role as subordinate to officers, and an officer's role as the artbiter of Heaven's Mandate. In this arrangement, the Marukani soldiers answer to Marukani non-coms, who in turn answer to an officer corps of Spirits and Gods, who in turn receive their directions from Dragon-blood generals, who trace their authority in this case to the Anathema themselves. (It should be noted that the text does not use this term, preferring the phrase "Chosen of the Sun.") Many pages are devoted to extolling these "Solars" in general - and the region's five known Anathema in particular - as beings chosen to lead the Marukan peoples into a new golden age.
"Curiously, the text does not present the Anathema as being the sole recipients of Heaven's Mandate. Other nations - including Lookshy itself, Great Forks, and the realm during the earliest years of the Scarlet Empress' reign - are described, to greater and lesser degress, as having received the Mandate of Heaven to rule over their territories. While the specific examples cited are certainly controversial, and many are flatly contradictory to Shogunate policy, the underlying principles are often sound.
"The text shows a startling lack of revisionist history, flatly declaring that the Anathema of old had lost the Mandate due to unrighteous actions; in such a light, the Usurpation of old was not a mutiny, but in fact was the proper response by the Dragon-blooded officers. The text attributes the Anathema's thousand-year absence to an extended period of purification via the Wheel of Reincarnation, though a sidebar explains that particular worthy individuals attempted to return much earlier, only to be hunted down by the "vile" Wyld Hunts of the self-described Immaculate Order.
"Applying the same logic that was used to praise the ancient Anathema and condemn their subsequent corruption and fall, the text states that an officer or ruler's worthiness is to be measured not by words, but by righteous deeds. Much has been made by Taisei Bahari about this last portion, which was cited as having motivated the accused's purportedly insubordinate actions. It is implied that the accused have been tainted by association with this text, and in fact are conspirators seeking to overthrow the Shogunate.
"Having questioned the accused at length with the aid of many charms and drugs, I find no truth in these assertions. Lookshy's own military manuals give more than adequate justification for a junior officer to refuse orders in circumstances such as the ones at question. Further questioning showed that the accused are loyal to their Daimyo and to the Shogun, though they are wary of the worthiness of their Taizei. Their service records are otherwise spotless.
"This court finds that there is no relationship between the accused's justified act of legal insubordination and their posession of a banned Anathema text. Any so-called "evidence" of such a link is at best attributable to hysteria, and at worst to an organized campaign of whispers and slander carried out by certain political allies of Taizei Fuo Bahari.
"Thus it is that to the charges of mutiny, conspiracy, and high treason, I hereby find the accused not guilty as charged. In light of the accused's confinement without pay for the four weeks it has taken for my department to conduct its investigations, I hereby sentence the accused to time already served, with reinstatement of two weeks' pay.
"These findings are issued with prejudice, and are not subject to appeal. This court has spoken and is hereby adjourned."
