Editing TheGreatCrusade (section)

== The Voice of the Sun ==

East of Gem, buried beneath the sands of the desert, is the temple-city of Zah-Amun. In RY 768, five years after the Scarlet Empress had forsaken her Realm, a Circle of Solars and one renegade Deathknight laid claim to Zah-Amun. These four Solars, who lived in Gem, believed that Zah-Amun held the key to redeeming their Deathknight compatriot and freeing him from his Deathlord's hold.

Unfortunately, their claim was contested by the Gold Faction of the Sidereals and their Solar students from Kether Rock. A Chosen of Battles, Tariq the Red, at first tried to persuade and cajole the Solars from Gem. He promised them ancient artifacts, martial and spiritual training and support from the forces of Heaven. But he refused to accept their Abyssal ally. Tariq the Red demanded that the Abyssal's death be a condition of their alliance. He argued that the deathknight was irredeemably corrupt, and that total destruction was his only possible fate. The Solars from Gem refused to turn on their friend, who despite his darkness, had shown himself loyal and true.

Solar battled Solar in the sand-filled halls of golden Zah-Amun. The battle raged for hours, back and forth, until every combatant had expended their last mote of essence. The students of Kether Rock fled, bearing away the corpse of their sifu, Tariq, who had perished. But one of the Solars from Gem, a wily Night Caste, had been wounded near to death, and the dim mak techniques of Tariq the Red still did their work.

(This is where we insert the dramatic redemption scene, the final unearthing of the temple-city by activating the ancient essence engines, and the Voice of the Sun speaks out across the entire world. It needs some work.)

In the months after the Voice of the Sun spoke, the Cult of the Illuminated and many variations thereof, have spread like wildfire across Creation, but especially in the South. Mortal kings like Tyrant Rankar of Gem have converted, and their subjects take after their ruler in droves (especially when he offers tax breaks to the faithful). Many of Solars who were once pawns of the Sidereal Gold Faction have turned against their former sifus, and struck out on their own to forge their destinies. With the Immaculate Order reeling and the Cult of the Illuminated hijacked by the Solars it was meant to control, the Sidereal Exalted have turned viciously on one another, letting slip the reigns of fate.

The Realm might have been content to ignore the Bull of the North - Yurgen Kaneko's ambitions lay in the Hundred Kingdoms and the Scavenger Lands, where the Realm held no sway. But the rise of Sun worship in the South threatens the very foundations of the Realm. Without tribute from the rich Southern metropoli, without firedust from Southern mines, without the rich slave trade and the spice trade, without the vast harvest of the Lap, the Realm would be much weaker, indeed. So weak that their empire might truly collapse, that Anathema feet might trod on the soil of the Blessed Isle as invaders and conquerors! So, the Dynasts of the Great Houses for once begin to put away some measure of their enmity, and gather their Legions to head South.

Elsewhere, and beyond, are the realms of Malfeas and Authcthonia... but they will not matter to this story.