The Old Emperor of this land sat in the chair where his ancestors had always sat, ready to listen to his courtiers argue fiercely below.
This was the karmic retribution deserved by the Chang Tang Emperor—they had long wished to toss this pile of nonsense to someone else, but the wise ones insisted that this land could not exist without an emperor. So, every generation of the royal family would produce an unlucky soul to be chosen as emperor, to endure the disgrace shared by the offspring of the wise within the court.
Sounds thrilling, doesn't it? But the Old Emperor had grown tired after decades of listening to the same drivel.
These old fools squabbled every day, not over critical concerns, but over the budget proportions for the army, navy, and air force, or whatever paltry research funding was left to claw over.
The army said they needed money. And they weren't wrong—without the army, the three passes could not be defended.
