Theology & Kung-fu

The Empress invented Five-Dragon's Style in 62 RY, and despite the fact the 700 year commemorative event is two years away, the series of secular martial arts tournaments are well under way. Likely contestants include Sesus Sikandi, Ragara Topek, Peleps Sariad and the entireties of the Heaven Fist Clan and the Followers Wise Warrior Way. It is rumored that the Empress herself will adjudicate the final match, and is taking lessons in the style she invented from the current Censor of Upright Martial Philosophy to ensure her currency and dogmatic purity.

Speculation still rages in the salons, in the Deliberative and in the halls of the Order about the Most Capable & Liberated Paragon of Daana'd. The Bride of Justice, once especially firm in her upbraidings of the Great Houses (especially House Cynis) has become increasingly unwilling to instigate the Blossoming of Sorrowful Violence since 707 RY and the Bloodied Scythe Rebellion. Given recent changes to the tax laws and the horrid rumors about the ongoing depravity of Mnemon Doran, the Black Jade Butcher of the Dragonswrath Plains, nobody can explain her reluctance to act.

Seven euromathoi trained in the Infernal Ape Uplifted Style were released by the mad sorcerer, Leedal Cuntunal, to test this esoteric variant on Celestial Monkey designed for rapid and gruesome dismemberment. Luckily for the peasants of the Corinda Satrapy, they found their Grinding Mill Claw-Slash to be no match for the Fox Among the Lambs Prana of the enlightened mortal, Honored Reverend Kind Snowfall. Despite being merely an awakened essence-user, she handily defeated all the demons with the loss of only her left hand.

Master Vision of the True Temple, formerly Ragara Toketi, the current Paragon of Pasiap will die in exactly seven months, one week, three days and fourteen hours. This was revealed to the master in a vision from the Dragons themselves. While Paragons are "revealed" rather than "chosen/elected", it is clear that the only viable candidates are Master Mnemon Harasa and Master Pillar of Prosperous Halls. Hasara is the better martial artist. Better still, she was a Master of the Wyld Hunt for decades and slew an Anathema personally. Some reckon her attendance at the Heptagram as a girl and her record of using demons against the Fair Folk and the beastmen hordes will cost her. Master Pillar, however, shows the signs of the Earth Aspect more clearly, and is the better architect and geomancer. He has built close to a thousand temples across the Blessed Isle and in the Northern wastes. Scandalously, it is whispered that Mnemon's offer of a sizable donation may tip the scales in her granddaughter's ascension.

In the docks at Arjuf, hostilities have erupted between the Hill-Shattering Heroes of Habru and both the Thrice-Victorious Sky Clan and the students of the Crouching Griffon Resplendent Dojo. Blackhelms suspect the three-way feud started as a turf war between the two criminal opium-trading gangs. When Habru, the midget sifu of Jade Mountain Style locally beloved for carrying a goremaul five times his size, was killed in the 'crossfire' trying to save a hapless dockworker from an exploding jetty, his students declared soul-vengeance against all those responsible for his death. Now, the Dragoncatchers are being sent in to deal with this rapidly escalating situation.

The ascetic hermit, Cat-Sparrow-Cricket, has written another "living sutra". This piece is written on the trunks of over 600 trees in the Garranth forest. The work, done in perfected golden calligraphy that moves and shifts with the season and grows along with the trees, starts as a paean to Sextus Jyles and his work, planting the forests of the Blessed Isle so very long ago. It then becomes a denunciation of city-dwellers and a treatise on how unplanned urban development is a guaranteed method of turning citizens into slaves of the Inconsiderate Horseman. It then praises the Elemental Wood Dragon's wonderful ability to make love to the cosmos, impregnating the earth, the stars and the hearts of men and women. It concludes by acknowledging Cat-Sparrow-Cricket's dragon-nature, exalting in the fact that can emulate Jyles' teachings by pleasing himself erotically while looking at instances of nature. Members of the Order are petitioning Cathak Trepitus, the owner of the woodlands, to declare the area a sacred sight free of logging and some are considering submitting the book for consideration as an Immaculate Text.

Peleps Deham, respected theologian and one of the subtler sifus of the Soft Marsh variant of the Drowning-in-Water Technique, has recently gained prestige within the Order when his nephew, Peleps Deled became the third-fastest exalt on record to ever reach the Water Dragon Form. There was a terrible tragedy within this glorious moment. As Deled's supine blows suddenly became supernal unavoidable and his speed enhanced, he accidentally killed the three unexalted tutor-monks he was training with in the very moment he achieved ascendant mastery.

Ten years ago, wizened and honored Immaculate scholars laughed fondly at students debating whether exaltation was of the Dragons (Azaiuki) or from the Dragons (Tassussuki). It wasn't that the theological question was a joke, per se, but rather that given the Elemental Dragons unknowable nature and the sheer vastness and complexity of the question, it was something to be treated more like a koan than a matter of dogma.

That, however, has changed. Now, this question is forming the central hub of a growing bitter theological divide between the Temple Tradition (who tend towards azaiuki to more strongly emphasize the worth of the Dynastic Host) and the Ascetic Tradition (whose humility and mysticism lends them towards tassussuki. The question of whether terrestrial exaltation is a trait that rests within a Prince of the Earth (making him unto the Immaculate Dragons) or is a condition that is granted to worthy souls by the Elemental Dragons (making them akin to the Immaculate Dragons) is something that needs to be dealt with. The feud is now causing differences in practice in issues as wide-ranging as:

• The degree of the Orders charity work to reflect gift-giving as a key principle
• The advised size and cultural weight of wedding gifts
• The manner in which the Order views and interacts with elementals
• The rights and responsibilities of non-Dynastic terrestrial exalts, such as the Northern cadet houses.

Ragara Myrron, the living bodhisattva and the greatest Follower of the Lotus Path in all Creation bar none, has created a new Precept for Earth Dragon Form, accessible only to those with the a mastery of essence refined beyond the Seventh Ring. This is an undreamt of glory for this entire age, but as the charm is too complex to be scribed, Myrron has no students currently capable of learning the refinement and it is feared it will be lost shortly after it was found.

Cynos Magnos has been declared a Prince Among Princes for his charitable donation of the time of his slave-gangs for the repairs to the Palace Sublime needed to resist decay and coloration during Descending Water. This donation is considered to be equivalent to seven talents of jade, meaning that Magnos out donated even Mnemon herself this season.

In a battle raging over six nights (with both participants resting in death-like comas during the daylight hours), Nellens Sumatra, bounty-hunting cowboy and defrocked monk of the Second Coil, broke every finger of the ghost-blooded nobleman, Prince Champion-of-Fifty-Shy, and rendered the deadly ninja master incapable of ever utilizing his more advanced techniques again. The battle incidentally destroyed the Immaculate Temple in Harbourhead, ruining the area's geomantic flows, along with much of the neighboring enclave. This battle seems to have clearly established the supremacy of the wood-aspected variant of Shadow of Plum-Blossom form over the air-aspected variant, overturning a thousand years of established doctrine and causing a rushed conclave of Southern lamas, to be overseen by Master Crushing Wave himself.

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