The Jade Dominion of Kaishon

The Realm at a Glance

Territory: The whole eastern third of the continent: river valleys, rice terraces, bamboo forests, coastal cities, and the mountain country around Lake Tsenkin.
Capital: Kokrin, the largest city in the world (over 1 million), laid out in a perfect grid, with the vermilion-walled Palace of Measured Harmony at its heart.
Other cities: Chaiyo (coast), Tsenkin (the archive-city on the lake), Sorogei, Shanyo.
The Long Rampart: A great wall running 1,100 miles along Kaishon's western border, facing the Grass Sea.
Government: The Emperor at the top, and beneath him a vast body of officials chosen by examination, not by birth. The throne's right rests on the Mandate of Merit: an emperor who rules badly can, by the teaching, be put aside.
Ruler: Emperor Tokrai Shaiku (71), gravely ill and seldom seen.
Key figures: Grand Chancellor Seiro Makok, who holds the real power; Princess Tokrai Seitotai (29), the emperor's daughter and the ablest heir, whom the old-guard ministers refuse to accept; General Dezau Honmyan, commander of the Long Rampart.
Religion: Officially atheist. The state follows the Doctrine of Ordered Reason, a teaching of duty, merit, harmony and learning. Gods and spirits are waved away as superstition. Peasants still leave offerings for the household spirits where the magistrates cannot see.
Economy: Silk, porcelain, tea, rice, iron and steel in great quantity, paper, lacquerware, and goods made by the thousand in the state workshops.
Military: Enormous conscript armies with officers who make war their life, war junks on the rivers and coasts, and more builders of works and walls than any other realm on Aethorra.
Advanced technology: Repeating crossbows that loose ten bolts in fifteen seconds; many-bolt siege engines; mechanical war carts; signal kites; fortifications on a scale no one else attempts.
Architecture: Tiered pagodas, sweeping tiled roofs, rammed-earth and brick walls, canal cities, and fortress gates the size of hills.
Currency: Gold mihomau, silver tsinkya. Paper notes of promise pass from hand to hand inside Kaishon and are worthless abroad.
Strengths: People, goods, great works, orderly government, and walls nobody has ever breached.
Weaknesses: Slow, rigid, and turned inward. Governors in the provinces who take bribes. A fight over the throne waiting to happen. The steppe growing more dangerous on the western border. A people who obey the state but do not love it.

Plates

**Kokrin**The capital of the Jade Dominion, a million people in a city nobody gets lost in

**The Examinations**The Mandate of Merit is sat at Kokrin for a whole month

**The Rampart Muster**Once a year every beacon on the Long Rampart is lit in one night

**The Dominion Marches**Conscript armies, professional officers and the largest engineering corps on Aethorra

**Tea Country**Tea, rice and porcelain from the hill country above the Tsanha

The sketchbook: crest, arms, landmark and heraldry sheets

The Land

**The East**River valleys, rice terraces, bamboo and the mountains around Lake Tsenkin

Realm map of The Jade Dominion of Kaishon. Tap to open it full size.

Provinces

Imperial Heartland

The core province of the Dominion, around the capital, Kokrin. On the map the River Tsanha and the River Shauho meet here, and the imperial roads run out from it in every direction: north to Tsenkin and Shanyo, east to Chaiyo, south to Sorogei and Hyunei, southeast to Tauya, and west to the Jade Gate.

Chaiyo Coast

The eastern seaboard province, around the port of Chaiyo and the mouth of the River Muhau. Its people live off the eastern sea: the Chaiyo tuna fleet, fishermen who fish with leashed cormorants, seaweed dried and eaten along the whole coast, and the hairy coast crab taken in the estuaries each autumn.

Tsenkin Highlands

The mountain province around Lake Tsenkin and the archive-city of Tsenkin. Its bamboo mountains are home to the Tsenkin panda, the imperial beast that is never hunted, and to the macaques that raid the archive-city's gardens.

Shanyo (province)

The Dominion's northernmost province, around the city of Shanyo, where Kaishon borders the Hrodvald lands of Clan Fevur. Its northern woods hold the spotted Shanyo deer, whose antler velvet is sold as medicine, and its hills grow Shanyo tea, the Dominion's daily drink and its second export after silk.

Rampart March

The frontier province strung along the inside of the Long Rampart, holding the Jade Gate and the Iron Gate. It is garrison country under General Dezau Honmyan, commander of the wall, whose two hundred thousand men live on paddy eels and Rampart soy.

Sorogei (province)

The southwestern province around the city of Sorogei, where the Long Rampart runs south toward the Verdant Deep. Its southern forests are the home of the singing Sorogei gibbon and the great aromatic camphor tree, whose wood makes insect-proof chests; the red Sorogei centipede is dangerous, and the Kaishon tiger, the Emperor's hunt, prowls the southern hills.

Southern Reach

The Dominion's southern frontier on the edge of the Verdant Deep, far from Kokrin and governed accordingly. In 1019 its peasants rose under the temple-keeper Tsehei Yotoke to restore the old gods, and were crushed by the Sorogei garrison; every roadside shrine in the Reach now holds a small clay head in his memory.

Voices of Kaishonsènhyo

Emperor Tokrai Shaiku

Emperor of Kaishon · 71

Thin, yellowed, dying slowly of something the physicians will not name. Once a vigorous reformer who rebuilt the canals and reopened the examinations to the southern provinces. Now rarely seen, propped on cushions, drifting in and out.

Grand Chancellor Seiro Makok

Grand Chancellor · 63

Immaculate gray silk, a thin gray beard, a voice like a closing door. Ninth Seiro to hold the seals of state; the family has run Kaishon's bureaucracy for six centuries and Makok has never questioned that it should. Passed the examinations first in his year at seventeen.

Princess Tokrai Seitotai

Only surviving child of the Emperor · 29

Slight, straight-backed, with her father's long face and a stillness she learned in a court that wanted her invisible. Passed the imperial examinations under a false name at twenty-two, placing third in the Dominion; when the fraud was discovered the ministers burned the paper and Makok has never forgiven her for making him do it. Reads four languages, plays buitso with generals, and has quietly cultivated the Rampart's commander for six years.

General Dezau Honmyan

Commander of the Long Rampart · 48

Weathered, square, with a bristling gray mustache and a crossbow bolt's puckered scar in his left shoulder from a steppe raid. Has spent twenty-six years on the wall and knows every gate, every garrison, and every tribe on the far side by name. Respects Sarsak Tolmar, which he reports and the ministers ignore.

Magistrate Tsehei Kaukai

Provincial magistrate, Southern Reach · 39

Plump, sweating, silk-robed, with soft hands and a fine collection of jade. Passed the examinations respectably and has spent fifteen years converting the Southern Reach's mahogany and pepper into personal wealth. Takes a tenth of everything, which in Kaishon is considered moderate.

Old Tsau

Keeper of a roadside spirit-shrine, Sorogei · 70s

A bent old woman with a wide gap-toothed smile and hands like roots, who has kept an illegal shrine to the household gods on the Sorogei road for fifty years. Every magistrate in that time has known and every magistrate has decided not to notice, because their wives leave offerings there. Claims to remember the Reasoned Rebellion; is lying, and does it beautifully.

Cities and Townsgeiran

Kokrin

You see the kites first. Travelers on the road from the Jade Gate, ten days behind them at a cart's pace, mark them over the paddies long before the walls: red and black shapes tethered to the Kite Terrace, passing word down the line from the Rampart. Then the wall rises out of the flat rice country, rammed earth faced with gray brick, straight as a ruled line for six miles. At the Tribute Gate the air smells of river mud from the Tsanha, smoke from the state kilns on the far side of the city, and the steam of a million pots of rice.

Read the full chapter on Kokrin →

Tsenkin

The road from Kokrin runs north twelve days and climbs the last four into the Tsenkin Range, through bamboo so thick the light turns green, and comes out above a long, cold lake with mountains down its eastern side. Tsenkin sits at the lake's southern end on stepped stone terraces, gray roofs over gray walls, with the Muhau leaving the lake just east of it in a white rush. The loudest sound in the archive-city is the macaques screaming at the ginseng walls. The second loudest is the scratch of brushes in the Page Hall.

Read the full chapter on Tsenkin →

Other towns and strongholds: Chaiyo, Sorogei, Shanyo, Hyunei, Tauya, Tsentsui, Jade Gate, Iron Gate. Every town on the continent →

Great Houses and Armsjauhû

Tokrai

Order, Merit, Reason

Seiro

The Seal Is Kept

Dezau

One Pace Is Enough

Tsehei

Silver Is Patient

Gyonba

The Tide Pays Both Ways

The houses in full: descent, heads, heirs, feuds

Succession law

The Jade Throne belongs to the Tokrai. The imperial succession law is kept in the Law Wing at Tsenkin. The Measured hold that it bars women from the throne. Princess Seitotai copied it twice in the Page Hall, and the old copyist who keeps the Page Ledger says her two copies differ by one character. The right to rule comes from the Mandate of Merit, and an emperor who rules badly can be put off the throne; the ministers deposed Tokrai Koimu in 725. Below the throne, land and goods are divided equally among sons, and daughters receive dowries. Office is never inherited, because it must be won by examination. Kaishon's great families are therefore families that pass examinations, and a family that stops passing them stops being great.

The ruling house: Tokrai

text Dezau Kokdau, Emperor; conquers the Three Thrones, 248 (the line before the Tokrai; see Dezau) ⋮ (the chronicles do not say how the throne passed to the Tokrai) │ Tokrai Meksi, Emperor; begins the Long Rampart, 341 (the dynasty dates from him) ⋮ ├── Tokrai Tegoi, Emperor; dies six days after walking the finished Rampart, 488 ⋮ ├── Tokrai Koimu, Emperor; deposed under the Mandate of Merit, 725; dies copying at Tsenkin ⋮ └── (an emperor, unnamed, died 1099) │ └── Tokrai Shaiku, born c. 1075, Emperor 1099 ═══ his principal consort (unnamed) │ ├── (sons, none surviving) └── Princess Tokrai Seitotai, born 1117

Seat: The Palace of Measured Harmony, Kokrin (palace-of-measured-harmony, kokrin); the Imperial Heartland (imperial-heartland).
Arms: The Great Seal of the Jade Throne: the Tsenkin peaks above the Long Rampart, the disc of reason, and the four measures in the corners. The Tokrai's own device is the disc alone, red within a square seal border. Tòkrài is the Kaishoni word for sun.
Words: Order, Merit, Reason.
Head: Emperor Tokrai Shaiku (71), dying of an illness his physicians will not name.
Heir: Disputed. Princess Seitotai (29) is his only surviving child. The Measured have named no male heir, and the ministries have not said which man of the Tokrai clan they would put forward.
Wealth and power: The throne rules a realm of fourteen million souls, about 9,000,000 leusores a year, and an army of 400,000. In 1146 the ministries hold all of it, not the emperor.
Allies and feuds: Seitotai has the Meritists, and she has courted General Dezau for six years. Grand Chancellor Makok will not let a woman hold the throne, and has said so in words that were written down.
History: In 1139 Seitotai placed third in the examinations under a false name, and the ministers burned her paper. In 1143 the emperor withdrew and Makok took the seals of state. In 1146 the emperor gave his daughter his seal, and the ministers took it back "for safekeeping."
Hooks: There may be two seals of the Jade Throne, and a seal-cutter has vanished. A fire in the Law Wing would destroy the succession law.
Direction: CONTESTED.

Seiro

Seat: The Seiro House in the Seal Quarter, Kokrin (kokrin).
Device: A gray square seal-stone with a mark in each corner. Seirosui is the Kaishoni word for a seal of office.
Words: The Seal Is Kept.
Head: Grand Chancellor Seiro Makok (63), ninth Seiro to hold the seals of state.
Heir: None who has passed the examinations. The next place in the row of brushes in the house's outer hall is empty.
Wealth and power: The family has run the ministries for six centuries. Makok is too proud to steal.
Allies and feuds: The Seiro lead the Measured, the ministries and the archive-city of Tsenkin. Makok has never forgiven Seitotai for making him burn her paper.
History:
588–596 — Grand Chancellor Seiro Ketsan persuades the emperor to take up the Doctrine of Ordered Reason. Ten thousand monks are put to death or driven out.
1143 — Makok takes the seals.
Hooks: Makok must choose an heir from outside the family. One candidate is a nephew who cheated on his examination, and Makok has shielded him for twenty years. Rúbêsèn Twelve-Times sold that nephew the essay.
Direction: FADING.

Dezau

Seat: The Long Rampart and its Rampart March (rampart-march); the family's old country is the north, where the Hall of the First Measure at Tsenkin (tsenkin) keeps Dezau Kokdau's rope.
Device: A knotted measuring rope coiled in a ring, black on buff.
Words: One Pace Is Enough.
Head: General Dezau Honmyan (48), commander of the Long Rampart for twenty-six years.
Heir: Not named.
Wealth and power: Honmyan has two hundred thousand men who will follow him. He has never once thought of using them for anything but the wall, and he is thinking of it now.
Allies and feuds: The Rampart party is his, against his will. He is loyal to the Dominion, not the Chancellor, and he is the Princess's sword if she draws it. He respects Sarsak Tolmar.
History:
248 — Dezau Kokdau of the northern throne conquers the other two Thrones and founds the Dominion. The Doctrine says he measured his father's field with a rope and found the landlord had cheated by one pace.
Hooks: Tavern talk in the Tribute Yards says Honmyan descends from Emperor Dezau Kokdau, whose line reigned before the Tokrai. No careful minister wants it looked into. The door of the Hall of the First Measure has not been opened in fifty years. Ínasôn Goat-Hand, who runs the archive's servants, heard from her grandmother that the rope rotted away, and she has told no one.
Direction: RISING.

Tsehei

Seat: The Southern Reach (southern-reach), where the family's magistrate sits at Hyunei (hyunei).
Device: A silver ingot on dark green. Tsèhèi is the Kaishoni word for silver.
Words: Silver Is Patient.
Head: Magistrate Tsehei Kaukai (39), who takes a tenth of everything and keeps the roads good.
Heir: Not named. Office is not inherited, and his sons must pass the examinations.
Wealth and power: The magistrate has turned fifteen years of mahogany and pepper into jade.
Allies and feuds: Kaukai stands with the Loosened Reins. He is terrified of the Tzalan, of an audit, and of his wife.
History:
1019 — A temple-keeper named Tsehei Yotoke leads the Reasoned Rebellion. His head hangs over Kokrin's Talking Gate for a year, and every roadside shrine in the Reach holds a small clay head in his memory.
c. 1131 — Kaukai takes the Southern Reach.
Hooks: The Reach's peasants say the magistrate and the rebel share more than a name. A brilliant peasant girl has sat the provincial examination under her brother's name, and Kaukai must decide what to do.
Direction: RISING, until the audit.

Gyonba

Seat: The counting-houses of Chaiyo (chaiyo), with a branch in Rókshái, Kokrin.
Device: A junk's sail over three waves, blue on white.
Words: The Tide Pays Both Ways.
Head: The eldest of the Gyonba counting-house.
Heir: A Gyonba son who has passed the examinations, for the family keeps one in the ministries every generation.
Wealth and power: The Gyonba live on rice broking, the Chaiyo tuna and money in the Long Market. They are the richest merchant family of the coast, and they must still step aside for any magistrate.
Allies and feuds: The family backs the Open Gate. The Gyonba would rather trade with Sarsak Tolmar than pay him.
History:
971–975 — Kaishon begins paying the Cherüsh tribute, and Chaiyo's merchants begin arguing against it.
Hooks: The Salt Brotherhood's Long Reach crew trades at Chaiyo more often than Kokrin knows, and the Gyonba buy what it brings.
Direction: RISING.

Kaishon's great families are CONTESTED. The Seiro have run out of sons who pass, the Dezau hold the wall, and the throne may pass to a woman the law may or may not allow.

Faith, Myth and Folkloredómecha

Myths

The Measure. By the Doctrine, Kaishon has no myths.

The Measure. By the Doctrine, Kaishon has no myths. Its own founding story is one all the same: the first Emperor, Dezau Kokdau, was a farmer's son who measured his father's field with a rope and found the landlord had cheated him by one pace. He walked to the old king's court to say so, was laughed at, and came back with an army. The Doctrine calls the rope the First Measure and keeps a rope in the archive-city that no one may see.

The Wall That Walks. The Long Rampart, the conscripts say, was not built but grew: the first stones were laid, and each night the wall walked a little farther north by itself, because it feared the steppe and wanted to reach the sea. Emperor Tokrai Tegoi walked its length to prove it was finished and died six days later, and the conscripts say the wall killed him for calling it done.

The Unseen Kin's Bargain. The countryside's telling of the Reasoned Purge: the household gods, told by the Emperor that they did not exist, agreed to stop existing on condition that they be fed anyway. They have kept the bargain. So has every kitchen in Kaishon.

Folk tales

Tsehei Yotoke's Head. The rebel of 1019, whose head was set up in Kokrin for a year and, the peasants say, kept talking: it gave the weather, named cheating mag…

Tsehei Yotoke's Head. The rebel of 1019, whose head was set up in Kokrin for a year and, the peasants say, kept talking: it gave the weather, named cheating magistrates, and on the last day told the crowd to go home and feed their Kin. Every roadside shrine in the Reach has a small clay head in it.

The Examiner's Cricket. A scholar sat the examinations twelve times and failed twelve times, and the cricket he kept for luck sat the thirteenth for him, in his sleeve, and passed. Told to explain any official who is stupider than his rank.

The Crane Bride. A jade crane became a woman to marry a fisherman, and left when he looked at her too long. Every pair of mandarin ducks on Lake Tsenkin is said to be a couple who did not look.

Old wives' tales

Never step on the threshold of a house; the Door-Kin sits there, and you will have bad luck until you apologize to a door.
A cricket that stops singing at noon means a magistrate is lying in the next town.
Rice that boils over is the Stove-Kin complaining; add a pinch and say nothing.
If a signal kite falls near your house, someone in it will fail an examination.
A magpie on the left is luck; on the right is a tax collector.
Old Tsau says: the Doctrine is right that there are no gods, and you should feed them anyway, because they are hungry.

Traditions

First Rice. The first bowl of every meal is set by the stove for the Kin and eaten afterward by the youngest child, "so it is not wasted." Every magistrate's household does this, and every magistrate does not see it.
The Brush and the Bowl. A boy sitting his first examination is given a brush by his father and a bowl of rice by his mother. He takes the brush and leaves the bowl, which his mother sets by the stove until he returns.
Kite Day. On the first windy day of spring, every village flies a kite from its highest roof, by law to honor the Rampart's signal corps. In truth the kites carry paper wishes to the sky, which the Doctrine has never quite managed to ban.
Tsenkin Copying. Since the earthquake of 890, every scholar who visits the archive-city copies one page of something by hand before leaving. Makok has copied four thousand pages. Seitotai copied the succession law, twice.

Law and Daily Lifeshônguyò

Courts, crimes, marriage, food, dress and a day in Kaishon

Law

Kaishon's law is written, numbered and kept. The ministries write it in the Emperor's name, and the imperial house's own laws, the succession law among them, are kept in the Law Wing at Tsenkin. Every district has a magistrate chosen by examination and moved every few years so that he cannot grow roots. He wears the jade crane on his robe, every citizen begins a sentence to him with hyáu-sen ("Honored One"), and he hears every case from a stolen pig to a murder. A tenth taken in bribes is thought moderate.

Every household is entered in the register with its members, land, stove and duty to the army. The city watch is drawn from the conscript garrisons, and its true work is fire. Since 927 every stove has been registered, and inspectors look into every kitchen on the tenth day.

Crime	Usual punishment
Petty theft, brawling	The bamboo rod, or a fine in silver
Gambling	Illegal; in practice a fee to the magistrate
Forging paper notes	The rod, and labor on the Long Rampart
Serious theft, assault, desertion	Labor on the Long Rampart
Examination fraud	The paper burned and the candidate barred for life
Exporting silkworms or their secret	Hanging at the Tribute Gate
Keeping a temple or preaching a faith	Arrest; household shrines are not seen
Arson	Death; no magistrate may accept silver for it
Rebellion	Death, and the head displayed

Outlawry and debt. A Kaishoni struck from the register may not own land, marry, sit an examination or appear in a magistrate's hall, and many such people end among the Rampart Squatters. Debts are registered with the magistrate and pass from father to son. A debtor who cannot pay may be sent to the state workshops to work it off, and the Kilns of Kokrin are full of debtors' sons.

Family

Marriage and divorce. Families arrange marriages through go-betweens, and the marriage is entered in the register. Mandarin ducks, which pair for life, are the wedding sign. The bride's family tells its Door-Kin that she is leaving, and her new family tells its own that she has come. Neither rite is written down. Either family may petition the magistrate to dissolve a marriage, and the register records the result and never the reason.

Inheritance. Land and goods are divided equally among sons, and daughters receive dowries. Office is never inherited, because it must be won by examination, though the Seiro family has given Kaishon nine Grand Chancellors. The Measured hold that the succession law bars women from the Jade Throne.

Women. Women may not sit the examinations. Princess Seitotai sat them under a false name, placed third, and had her paper burned. Outside the ministries women run a great deal: a widow owns the largest gambling house in Kokrin, a woman keeps the Kite Terrace, and every household shrine is kept by its mothers.

Who is not free. Kaishon holds no slaves. Its conscripts are not free until their term ends, nor are men sentenced to the Rampart. The Tsenkin Hill-Folk are free because the register has never managed to count them.

Children and schooling. About one Kaishoni in three can read, and every province has state academies. A boy going to his first examination is given a brush by his father and a bowl of rice by his mother. He takes the brush, and leaves the bowl by the stove until he returns. Learning is for passing examinations.

Daily life

Food and drink. Muhau rice is boiled at every meal, and everyone drinks Shanyo tea. The first bowl of every meal is set by the stove for the Kin, and the youngest child eats it afterward "so it is not wasted."

	An official of the Seal Quarter	A porter of the Fire Wards	A rice farmer on the Muhau
Morning	Rice porridge, pickled greens, Shanyo tea	Rice porridge and tea	Rice porridge, pickled greens
Midday	Rice, Tsanha sturgeon, lotus root, wine	A bowl of rice with paddy eel from a Yomìn stall	Rice and soy in the paddy, with tea from a jar
Evening	Rice, black Kokrin pork, coast crab in autumn, Chaiyo seaweed, wine	Rice, soy, pork on the tenth day, ale	Rice, ford carp or paddy eel, greens

Conscripts on the Long Rampart live on rice, Rampart soy and paddy eels.

Dress and houses. Officials wear silk in the colors of their rank, and commoners wear hemp in blue and brown. Farmers live in rammed-earth houses under tile. A Fire Wards family in Kokrin lives in two rooms and shares a courtyard stove, while a Seal Quarter family has a walled compound with a pond and a household shrine that nobody calls a shrine. By law every city block keeps a well or a covered water jar.

Health and hygiene. The state keeps granaries in every province. In the Year Without Summer Kaishon opened them, and came through better than anyone. Physicians are examined like other officials. Tsenkin ginseng is worth its weight in silver, Shanyo deer antler velvet is a medicine, and Sorogei camphor keeps insects out of clothes. Bitter-bell is an old poison of the court, and there is a Kokrin herb-seller who swears a palace servant has been buying it: Tèinai the Herb-Seller (tèinai, "safe"). In the Southern Reach the magistrates pay any price for bitter-bark. Every city ward has a bath-house, entered in the fire register like any other stove.

Birth and death. A birth is entered in the register within ten days, and the Door-Kin hears the child's name before the magistrate does. The dead are buried on family hillsides, their names cut in Measures. By the ministries' reckoning a funeral is only a custom. By the family's, the dead join the Kin and are fed with them on the longest night.

Pastimes. Kaishon fights crickets, plays buitso, keeps caged cicadas, flies kites and gambles, all of it against the law or nearly so. On Kite Day every roof that can hold a child flies a kite with a paper wish tied to its string.

A day. In the cities the fire-tower drums keep the day, and in the country the paddies do. The week is ten days, and on the tenth, shôktéwâ, the shops close and every household cooks for the Kin.

Where it is going: CONTESTED. Kaishon's law is the most complete on Aethorra, and it now hangs on a succession law that may exist in two copies differing by one character. The register and the granaries will outlast any emperor. Whether the throne's law is the Measured's or the Meritists' will be settled in the Seal Quarter, and perhaps by whoever holds the seal.

Trade, taxes and money

Makes and sells. More of everything than anyone: rice, silk, porcelain, lacquer, tea, paper, iron and steel, ginseng, tuna, mahogany and pepper. Silk, tea and porcelain go west. The steel stays home, and to carry the rearing of the Tsenkin silkworm out of the Dominion is a crime against the state.

Buys. Horses, felt and hides from the steppe, and glass and medicines from the far west. Little else.

Taxes. - The rice-tax: a tenth of every harvest in kind, stored in grain-tax warehouses like those at Yomìn. - Labor service: thirty days a year from every household, on the Rampart, the canals or the roads. - The dock tax, a tenth of landed catch. It is the Chaiyo Boat-People's only tie to Kokrin. - Stall licenses in every market, held in families for generations. - The magistrate's tenth, which is not a tax, is paid everywhere, and a tenth "is considered moderate."

Paper notes are taken at full worth for small taxes and refused for large ones, and forgers in Yomìn print false twentieths because nobody checks them.

Direction. CONTESTED. The largest treasury in the One Land cannot buy an answer to who will sit on the throne.

The Year in Kaishonzanhek

Months. Nairui (kite), Kàshòkdau (tea), Sèdewek (silk), Tsau (rice), Yasâuchên (lotus), Mûhauhi (dragon-river), the month the Muhau floods, Chígútá (grain), Mèizûrûi (examination), Tápèkòn (crane), Shôktéwâ (stove), Tsentsûi (pine), Soróshài (plum blossom).

Week. Tens, as in Tharax, and for the same reason: the months divide by ten. The days are naitàu, tebui, hênmau, yóktsi, gusòn, kaudá, paken, chinshìn, keinu (one to nine) and shôktéwâ (stove), the tenth, a day of rest when the household cooks for the Kin. The Accord Days belong to no ten.

Years. Reign years. Year one begins when an emperor takes the throne, and every paper is dated from it: the 48th year of Shaiku. The ministries keep the Reckoning as well, for dealings with foreigners.

Festivals:

Kite Day (the first windy day of spring, nearly always in Nairui). Every village flies a kite from its highest roof, officially to honor the Rampart's signal corps. The paper wishes the kites carry are not official.
The Rampart Muster (1st of Yasâuchên). Once a year every beacon on the Long Rampart is lit in a single night, from the Frostmarch to the Verdant Deep, to prove the signal corps still works. It has failed twice.
The Examinations (Mèizûrûi). The Mandate of Merit's examinations are sat at Kokrin all month. The month is named for them.
Feeding the Kin (the longest night, 6th of Shôktéwâ). Every household sets a full bowl before the stove for its household spirits. The Doctrine calls this a custom and not a rite, and every official's household does it.

Speak Kaishoniyaidaihya

Kaishoni	English
Hyáu-sen, shau-mi kèktèi.	Honored One, this small one comes. (The correct way to enter a magistrate's hall.)
Ketsán, kônrì, tàiro.	Order, merit, reason. (The motto of the Doctrine.)
Meksi kwanmon?	Where is the Rampart? (Question words need no particle.)
Tsei tsò kézu.	I don't know.
Kwímói chonón radáuho?	How much money?
Tsò myókra.	There are no spirits. (The Doctrine's creed, said flatly. Literally "no spirit.")
Dutó shôktéwâ.	Feed the stove. (What the countryside says instead. Literally "give the stove.")
Yàu tónba mèizûrûi myòk?	Have you passed the examination? (The only question that matters. Literally "you finish examination?")
Téirokjû háuchò giwe.	The mandate is with the Throne. (Said at every court ceremony; said in the Reach with a shrug.)
Sènhyo koimu, pínsònkó.	People are quiet at night. (A saying about the Reasoned Purge, never explained.)
Hênmau áumè chontatsa	three horses (literally "three head horse")
Tebui bichondi ròtonyó	two letters (literally "two sheet letter")
Tsei jek jauhû	my house (literally "I of house")

Kaishoni	English
raihochu	person
tánbôshék	father
hòkrai	husband
bànrek	king
dutèi	farmer
tòkrài	sun
kyòsíshâu	wind
kíngyon	lake
módói	wood (material)
ganzanrai	town
tokra	door
gyárêirù	day
yateicha	spring
sèipo	bread
zenmàn	wine
kûizínba	dog
óbék	bird
hôkmyo	nephew
gêigàura	parent
shàunok	carpenter
chanhyàn	healer
tonzan	master (of a house or craft)
chehàn	hail
róirá	plain

The full Kaishoni dictionary

The script of Kaishon, with numerals and a sample line

Great Worksrúbêsèn

Kaishon writes more than any realm on Aethorra and signs less: its great works are registers, commentaries and copies, brushed in Measures by men who were examined on them, and the Doctrine holds that a book is good in the degree that nothing in it can be disputed. What the realm loves it keeps in Reed-marks, in teahouses and in kitchens, where the magistrates do not see it because their mothers keep it.

Faith · book of sayings, with commentary

The Measures of Ordered Reason

Ketsán, Kônrì, Tàiro “order, merit, reason”

Borontan Geisho · c. 271 R.

Eighty-one short sections on duty, merit, harmony and measure, each beginning with a thing that can be counted: a field, a granary, a road, a man's years of service. It never names a god, not even to deny one. The denial came in 590 with Grand Chancellor Seiro Ketsan's Commentary on Merit, bound with the Measures ever since, which is the page visiting scholars most often copy at Tsenkin.

Kokdâu zoreiji. Rekpài kokdâu sanshìho.Measure the field. Then measure the lord.

Its author, and how it lives now

Borontan Geisho. Passed the first examinations Dezau Kokdau set in 260, served as a magistrate in the old country of the northern throne, and wrote the Measures when he was too old to sit in his hall.

Every candidate for the Examinations has it by heart, its motto is brushed over the door of every state academy, and the Meritists answer the Measured with its second sentence.

Chronicle · chronicle, one column to a year

The Annals of the Throne

Giwe jek zanhek “the Throne of year: the Throne's years”

Kansek Tsauma · 612–640 R., continued yearly to the present

A register of the Jade Throne from Dezau Kokdau's conquest in 248, one column to a year: the harvest, the edicts, the tax, the deaths of emperors and chancellors, and nothing the ministries' registers could not show. It gives the number of temples shut in the Reasoned Purge and no names, and its entry for 725, the one deposition under the Mandate of Merit, is a single line. The originals of its first four centuries went into the lake in 890, and some of the copies were made from Kokrin texts that burned in 927, so its early reigns are copies of copies with nothing behind them.

Tsò kézu, tsò gektsí.Not known, not written.

Its author, and how it lives now

Kansek Tsauma. A compiler in the ministry of the archive at Tsenkin, whose examination-name means 'wise'; he wrote the first four centuries and set the rule every compiler since has kept.

Candidates learn the reign-chapters for the Examinations, clerks quote Tsauma's rule when they are asked to enter a rumor, and in the Brush Quarter's lodging houses the Meritists read the one line for 725 aloud.

Faith · household recipe-book

The Stove Book

Shôktéwâ jek rúbêsèn “stove of book: the stove's book”

No one · oldest known copies c. 600 R.

The Unseen Kin have no scripture, and this is what they have instead: how much rice for the Stove-Kin, which bowl for the Door-Kin, what the Kin are to be told of a birth, a marriage, a death or an examination, and how the full bowl is set on the longest night. It names no god and asks nothing. It is written in Reed-marks only, never in Measures, and has passed from mother to daughter since the Reasoned Purge burned the temples' books and missed the kitchens.

Jéknàu tsáu, myókra. Bonyàn, pahòtà.The first bowl, the Kin. After, the child.

Its author, and how it lives now

No one. Every copy is in a different hand, most of them women's, and every keeper adds her own pages before she gives it to a daughter.

Forbidden as the instrument of a faith and kept in nearly every kitchen in Kaishon, the magistrates' included; a stove-inspector who finds one enters it as a cookery book, which it is.

Poetry · short poems, disputed

The Margin Poems

Ryonsówau jek nàchên “paper of side: the paper's edge”

Attributed to Emperor Tokrai Koimu · after 725 R.

Forty-one short poems found in the margins of pages copied at the far desk of the archive: lakes, ink, cold, the sound of other men's brushes, and nothing else. The originals went into the lake in 890. They survive because an unnamed copyist of the forty-year recopying copied the margins too, against the rule, and the Measured hold that he wrote the poems himself.

Kíngyon koimu. Tsei gomê koimu.The lake is quiet. I am quiet too.

Its author, and how it lives now

Attributed to Emperor Tokrai Koimu. The only emperor cast down under the Mandate of Merit, sent to Tsenkin in 725, where he copied manuscripts at the far desk until he died.

On no examination syllabus and known to every candidate; a visitor to Tsenkin who copies a margin poem as his one page is taken to have said something, and the Page Ledger enters it like any other page.

Stage · shadow play for paper screen

The Measured Field

Kokdâu zoreiji “measure field”

Shizo Teison · c. 870 R.

The Doctrine's own founding story on a lit paper screen: Dezau Kokdau measures his father's field with a rope, finds the landlord has cheated by one pace, is laughed at by the old king's court, and comes back with an army. The ministries license it because every line in it is the Doctrine's, and its title is the first two words of the Measures. In the court scene the crowd of laughing figures has two pins with nothing on them, where the countryside says two strangers stood and did not laugh, and Teison never said why.

Hyáu-sen, shau-mi kokdâu. Kokdâu geishò.Honored One, this small one has measured. The measure is true.

Its author, and how it lives now

Shizo Teison. A shadow-master of Sorogei whose troupe cut the first set of figures; nothing else is known of him but his screen.

Played in the villages on Kite Day and in the Rókshái teahouses on the tenth day; no troupe has ever filled the two pins, and the ministries have never objected to an empty pin, since nothing is on it.

Tales · storytellers' tale-cycle

The Crooked Bank Tales

Reikochà nàchên jek tautsá “river side of story: the stories of the far bank”

The storytellers of the Crooked Bank · c. 930 R. to the present

Some sixty tales told nightly in the suburb the grid never reached, never written in Measures and seldom in Reed-marks. The best known are 'The Examiner's Cricket,' in which an examiner passes a cricket shut in a candidate's cell and is promoted for his judgment, and 'The Rice March,' the tale of General Dezau Kyarau's thirty thousand at the Tontanor fords in 626, the last Kaishoni army to stand west of the Rampart. The tellers name no official, and the audience supplies one.

Chisàu, tobok tsauma.It sings; therefore it is wise.

Its author, and how it lives now

The storytellers of the Crooked Bank. Tellers in the cheap teahouses across the Tsanha from Kokrin; none has ever put a name to a tale, and none has been arrested for one.

Told every night on the Crooked Bank to full houses; 'it sings, therefore it is wise' is said in Rókshái of any appointment the Seal Quarter makes.

Song · conscripts' song

Beacon Night

Wekèisìn jek pínsònkó “fire of night: the fire's night”

Dôijoi Two-Terms · 1109 R.

A song of the Rampart Muster, the one night each year when every beacon on the Long Rampart is lit from the Frostmarch to the Verdant Deep: one verse to a tower, called by its number, with the men on it and what they eat, down to the last verse, when the Kite Terrace at Kokrin lights its own. It has a verse for the tower that did not light, and every singer puts in whichever tower his grandfather blamed.

Wekèisìn ôtsa. Tsei-tsei nátéi.The fire goes on. We stay.

Its author, and how it lives now

Dôijoi Two-Terms. A conscript of the Rampart March who served two terms on the wall, was discharged in 1106, and died among the Rampart Squatters.

Sung on the wall and in the Tribute Yards on Muster night, and outside the Rampart by the Squatters all year; the ministry of war once issued a verse in praise of the ministers, and no tower has been heard to sing it.

A Thousand Yearstautsá

Year	What happened
0 R.	The Accord of Surmave. The six surviving great powers and the Tharaxi sign the Accord on an island in Lake Surmave, fixing borders and founding the calendar: Vareth, Wessary, the Marrowmere League, the Twin Crowns of Castavar and Lasdara, the Sarvani Khaasarate, the Three Thrones of the East, and Tharax. Hrodvald sends no envoy and signs nothing.
0–146 R.	The Accord holds. The Accord holds, mostly. Vareth and Wessary spend the first century marrying into each other's royal houses. The Sarvani Khaasareem dig the first great salestoot. The Three Thrones fight each other every generation. Tharax, having lost half its citizens in the Century of Fire, rebuilds the Anvil.
248 R.	The Founding of Kaishon. In the East, Emperor Dezau Kokdau of the northern throne conquers the other two Thrones and founds the Jade Dominion of Kaishon. He institutes the first examinations for office in 260.
260 R.	The first examinations. Emperor Dezau Kokdau institutes the first examinations for office in Kaishon.
341 R.	The Long Rampart begun. Kaishon begins the Long Rampart under Emperor Tokrai Meksi, after steppe raiders sack Sorogei.
461–470 R.	The Rampart War. The Rampart War. Tontanor attacks Kaishon's unfinished wall for nine years. Kaishon loses a hundred thousand conscripts and holds. The war teaches Kaishon to build the repeating crossbow.
471 R.	The Rampart Marriage. The Rampart Marriage. A year after the Rampart War ends, Kaishon buys peace with a marriage: Princess Tokrai Hyuha marries Iygar, son of Shaghis the Gray, at the Tontanor fords. Her clerks teach the Charnazin to count horses. Kaishon has never married out since, and the Measured strike the marriage from the register in 503.
488 R.	The Long Rampart completed. The Long Rampart is completed, 1,100 miles from the Frostmarch to the edge of the Verdant Deep. Emperor Tokrai Tegoi dies six days after walking its length.
505–509 R.	The Emptying of the West. The Emptying of the West (Sheti Tsanha). Emperor Tokrai Tsonda orders the steppe cleared for three days' ride in front of the Long Rampart. General Dezau Nogowei's columns burn empty tents for four years; the grass fired in 507 burns back along the ditch and takes the wall's own hoardings; a column of eight thousand sent after the Saiga Followers in 508 is led in a circle by its Nintang guides and half of it dies. Grand Chancellor Seiro Hishei's memorial of 509 ends the measure on the emperor's death. The Nintang, half Kaishoni by the conscripts who stayed, and the Rampart Squatters, who moved one li west and called themselves 'not present,' date from it. The steppe calls it Ghorsot Zaghisrat, the Grass Burned.
588–596 R.	The Reasoned Purge. The Reasoned Purge. In Kaishon, Grand Chancellor Seiro Ketsan (ancestor of the present Seiro Makok) persuades the emperor to adopt the Doctrine of Ordered Reason as state creed and outlaw temples. Ten thousand monks are executed or exiled. Kaishon has been officially without gods ever since. The old faith survives in the household spirits of the countryside.
623 R.	The Year Without Summer. The Year Without Summer. Crops fail across Aethorra. The Frostmarch, the Heartlands and the Sunmaw all starve. Kaishon opens its granaries and survives better than anyone. The Hizkari, who lived on the slopes, become a hardened remnant people.
626–627 R.	The Rice March. The Rice March. In the Hunger Wars, General Dezau Kyarau leads thirty thousand conscripts out of the Jade Gate to escort Kaishon's rice convoys west and collect Caelvenne's silver. At the Tontanor fords, on the League's Day of the Accord Days, his repeating crossbows kill some three thousand Aldmeri levies and Caelvennois marines who had been taking the rice; that night the steppe tribes take it. Kyarau marches home in 627 with the silver, the only Kaishoni army to stand west of the Rampart since the Emptying. In the same season the Zarvani burn a Castavari column with naphtha on the salest channels below Kebidaan, the first Talodin fire.
631 R.	The Peace of the Isle. The Peace of the Isle ends the Hunger Wars. The envoys of the six signer-realms meet on the Isle of the Accord in the Accord Days, the first time since 0 R. Five terms: a signer whose army crosses a border in the Accord Days loses its chair at the Isle for seven years, and Kaishon sits out the first penalty; no realm's soldiers may seize a Qaflan wheel or a Drift keel, the Road Terms; each signer sends an envoy every year to hear the Accord read, the seed of the Sitting; grain in transit is not spoil; and a price is not an act of war. Hrodvald is not asked.
641 R.	The Charter of Hearths. Aldmere's Charter of Hearths, signed by King Hethwur IV, guarantees freedom of worship in the kingdom. Refugees from the Reasoned Purge and the Berrode's inquisition settle in the Heartlands.
725 R.	Emperor Tokrai Koimu deposed. Kaishon's Emperor Tokrai Koimu is deposed by the ministers under the Mandate of Merit for "negligence," the first and only time it has happened. He is sent to the archive-city of Tsenkin, where he dies copying manuscripts.
763 R.	The Barerk Raid on Shanyo. The Barerk Raid on Shanyo. Hrodvald longships row down the northeast coast and sack Kaishon's northern city. Kaishon extends the Rampart's northern forts to the sea.
801 R.	The Black Autumn. The Black Autumn. A blight destroys the Heartlands wheat crop. Aldmere borrows a fortune from Caelvenne to buy Kaishoni rice. The Grain Compact debt doubles.
890 R.	The Tsenkin Earthquake. The Tsenkin Earthquake. Lake Tsenkin's shoreline collapses; the archive-city loses a third of its manuscripts. Kaishon spends forty years recopying what survives.
899 R.	The Ledger Peace. The Ledger Peace, sworn on the Isle of the Accord in the Accord Days after a year of Qaflan wheel-letters, with Kaishon's ambassador as go-between. The Grain Compact is restored word for word and the measure is to be set each New Year's Day by Moot and Conclave together; the barges of 892 are paid at the Compact price and the Drift paid a leusore a keel for Threeoars; Castavar's chair at the Isle, empty since 895 for crossing into Daalher on the Khaasar's Day of 894, stays empty to 901 and Castavar swears the Peace standing and gets nothing else; Zarvand keeps Daalher and doubles its gate; Tharax takes its twenty years of grain and resolves never to be paid in gold, a resolution kept until 1131; and the Qaflan and the Drift are given a bench in the Sitting's hall to swear the Road Terms on, which becomes the Bench of the free peoples. Princess Somith Tulvard marries Prince Corenvo of Castavar to seal it. The sentence assigning the banks of the Tsanha fords is written badly, and the War of the Tsanha Fords is fought over it in 911.
927 R.	The Great Fire of Kokrin. The Great Fire of Kokrin. A third of the capital burns. The rebuilt city is laid out on the grid it has today.
971–975 R.	The Cherüsh Ascendancy. The Cherüsh Ascendancy. The Cherüsh tribe conquers its neighbors on the Grass Sea and becomes the largest steppe tribe. Kaishon pays the Cherüsh olriqtun tribute to keep them off the Rampart, a practice that continues to this day and that Kaishon's ministers call "gifts."
1019 R.	The Reasoned Rebellion. The Reasoned Rebellion. Peasants of Kaishon's Southern Reach, led by a temple-keeper named Tsehei Yotoke, revolt to restore the old gods. Kaishon crushes it with the Sorogei garrison. Tsehei Yotoke's head is displayed in Kokrin for a year. Household shrines are quietly tolerated afterward.
1074 R.	Sack of a Zarvani spice-fort. Tzalan warriors sack a Zarvani spice-fort on the Nhal. Zarvand and Kaishon both begin pushing garrisons into the Verdant Deep.
1082 R.	The Cherüsh Civil War. The Cherüsh Civil War. The Cherüsh olriq is murdered by his brother; the tribes split into four factions and fight for a generation. Kaishon stops paying tribute. Aldmere's eastern border is quiet for the first time in a century.
1099 R.	Tokrai Shaiku takes the Jade Throne. Tokrai Shaiku takes the Jade Throne at 24 after his father's death.
1117 R.	Tokrai Seitotai born. Tokrai Seitotai is born to Emperor Tokrai Shaiku's principal consort. The emperor has no surviving sons.
1138 R.	Selra's raid on Shanyo. Selra Stormbrand's longships raid Shanyo on Kaishon's north coast, the last great Hrodvald raid of any kind.
1141 R.	Sarsak Tolmar unites the Cherüsh. Sarsak Tolmar, 22, unites the four Cherüsh factions after killing the last rival olriq in single combat at the ruins of Tontanor. He pitches his camp on the old capital's ruins and names it Tolmar-Buyor. Kaishon resumes tribute payments at once.
1143 R.	Makok takes the seals. Emperor Tokrai Shaiku falls ill and withdraws from public view. Grand Chancellor Seiro Makok takes the seals of state.
1145 R.	The saddle on the Bench. In the Accord Days that close 1145, Sarsak Tolmar sends a rider, Kholab, to the Sitting at the Isle, the first Cherüsh envoy in six centuries. Kholab refuses the Bench and demands a chair as the Charnazin's heir; the Sitting refuses, since the Charnazin never signed the Accord. He leaves his saddle on the Bench and rides for the fords. The same Sitting hears the Khaasar's letter of 1137 read into the record without reply from Tharax, the bishop's sermon on the Fourth Crusade, and Selra Stormbrand's letter asking for the Absent Chair, answered as always. Nothing is settled.

Dispatchessonhainu

From 1 January 2027 the Reckoning runs day by day, and news from Kaishon arrives here as it happens: who rode where, who fell, who lied at council.