A thousand curses upon the head of Shang Wu, usurper of our Empress' throne!\n\nA thousand curses upon all the men who backed this betrayer, driving our true ruler from the throne room and into hiding!\n\nA thousand curses upon this island, where our ships crashed in our flight from our homeland!\n\nCurse its 'mysteries' and 'secrets' and all this bloody irritating sand. Nothing good will come of staying here long. I can feel a stale evil in the air around this place, and at night it is almost as if I can feel that broken mountain in the distance turn its red gaze upon me. Tomorrow I am summoned to the Empress' chambers, and I will explain my concerns to her then.\n\n-Zhi

A People Betrayed

Cursing at the Sky

Today, I witnessed something disturbing.\n\nA petitioner came to the Empress, in her makeshift palanquin on the beach, and decried this land of Aeternum. He claimed it would only lead to our doom. I found myself nodding in agreement; I, too, hate this place.\n\nBut in a flash of anger quite unlike her, the Empress set her royal guard upon him. They beat him bloody and dragged him to the crude cells we had only just erected yesterday. He is to be held there without food or water for as long as she deems necessary.\n\nI'm very lucky that the Empress didn't see me nodding, or I fear I'd be dying of thirst in a cell, too.\n\nI would expect this behavior of the treacherous Shang Wu, but now even our beloved Empress has become hard and warlike. Her brown eyes have turned redder and redder. What has become of the upstanding woman we followed out of our homeland?\n\n-Jing

A Petitioner Caged

Flash of Anger

Named for the black fungus that grows within, the ruins of Chinese settlers lay amidst lush wetlands, majestic waterfalls, and towering cliffs

Empress' Descent Chapter - NWGuide Database of Lore

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