poppyhaze

no first use policy

  • she/her/tā

会说中文 ✨ QC at Falcon Safety Products ✨ will never be a famous writer



Before you can reach the Sublime Summit, the palace at the heart of Imperial power, you had to pass through the Starhold Gate to walk down the nearly half-kilometer, "Avenue of Ten Thousand Ancestors", where you're flanked on all sides by dozens of statues.

It's called that because every heroic, or not so heroic, figure in Imperial history has a 4m tall statue in the plaza around the avenue, and were so arranged so each one is facing away from the gate, towards the Sublime Summit and its palace.

To view any statue's face on the walk up, you have to turn to face them, and I'm told that's to symbolize who came before. There are supposedly whispers about the precise arrangements and their proximity to the palace and the avenue reflecting the internal politics of the summit.

The statue of former Emperor Finn I, the father of the reigning sovereign Finn II, is to the right of the palace and behind him is the tyrant he overthrew, the statue of Tiffany the Terrible. And that is to remind his son to be humble because of the cost of rebellion.

It's very intimidating to have the giant doors of the Starhold Gate open up to dozens of massive statues with their backs to you. And then it's even more intimidating to leave the summit and look down at all these larger-than-life figures staring at you.

But I was also told that Tiffany the Terrible had her statue put up while she was still alive in that spot, just to have absolute control over how she was remembered, and Finn II replaced the previous statue ahead of her, which was in disrepair anyway.

What else was something that everyone "in the know" said that was simply gazing at tea leaves and outright untrue? Did everyone believe it, or maybe they felt like I did? All this politicking and gesturing felt a lot sillier when I thought of things like that.


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