The Eternal Exile: A Nation Hopping AAR

morningSIDEr: Quite right about the rebellions! It's a shame the Peasant's War is only meant to trigger for the historical European nations, it works great for other nations too.
adamclason: Well, it gets boring to win all the time. And besides, life imprisonment is a much more grim punishment if you're still a prisoner two centuries later!
Boris: I bet you do! Still, I'd rather my fingers not be worn down to the bone, so I'll keep to once a day, if it's all the same.
blsteen: Colonel Douchebag! I love it. Yes, they only detected her in India - they might know about Europe, but their range of knowledge is lessened by technology and culture. Well, my theory is that the machine was designed to send them to Earth and escape, but the time machine bit took over and spat people out every which way.
And yes, perceptive as always, Lucille indeed.

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TIANSHUN II PART 3

XXX

24/4/1510

Talena thought it was manifestly unfair that she had been thrown into a dungeon that did NOT have hidden passages, weak mortar or rusty bars that could be pried open. In fact, there were many things that her dungeon did not have, such as a door in the normal sense. She was in a long, high cellar, built into a space below part of the palace and long ago sealed off with massive walls. The only access was a wide metal and wood cover in the roof, some five metres above her. Other than that two shafts to east and west let in sunlight, but also rain, snow and leaves. A drain in the floor provided a garbage disposal area, but she couldn’t even fit her hand in, let alone escape.
She had been literally pushed down the hole, Cade knowing she would heal, and had simply been left. Every day food and water was lowered with ropes from the ceiling, and occasionally clothes and sheets were also provided. Water for washing had also been lowered. However, her attempt at scaling such a rope had resulted in Cade having not just the roof, but the shafts sealed up for a week. That had left her in total darkness and very near to choking. Since then she had not tried to escape.
And so for two and a half years she had languished in the pit, unable to free herself, isolated from the world. She had tried to use her limited resources to carve the mortar away, but her progress in two years had been to make one block of thousands ready to move. Still, if she didn’t somehow die beforehand she might escape in about a thousand years. It was not a comforting thought!

Talena miserably lay down on her collection of blankets and pillows, and tried to sleep. However, she became aware of noises. Heading over to her western airshaft she could discern shouts, the running of feet, and even the clash of weapons! Something was going on, and instead of being part of it she was stuck in her oubliette.

Suddenly there was movement by her ceiling access. Muffled voices and footsteps. Then, to her surprise the cover was actually lifted off, and bright lamplight shone down into her dungeon.
“Talena? Are you there?” a woman asked in her language.
“Yes! Yes!” Talena shouted, fear, hope and expectation rising in her.
“Hang on.” There was some movement in the shadows, and then a long, knotted rope dropped down for her.
Talena grabbed it and swarmed up the rope before the chance could vanish. She didn’t spare her prison a moment’s thought.



At the top of the rope there was a blonde haired woman offering a hand. Talena took it and in seconds was standing in the small room that sat atop the dungeon cellar. The blonde woman smiled at Talena and offered her hand again.
“Pleasure to meet you face to face. It’s been a long time coming. I’m Lucille de Valois.”
Talena shook Lucille’s hand, aware that she was quite scruffy and dirty compared to her rescuer.
Lucille had blue eyes like Talena, but her shoulder-length blonde hair was not pulled back, but allowed to hang down by her ears. She was slighter in build and two inches shorter then Talena, but was also quite pretty.
“Pleased to meet you! You know who I am, I guess?”
“Getting there, Talena. Now, we better get going. There’s a bit of a ruckus around the palace.”
“What’s happening? I’m a bit out of the loop.”
Lucille led her over to where a young man in the armour of an Imperial Guardsman was waiting. “The Emperor’s son has launched a coup against his father...and his advisors. Hauritz and Cade and Channing. I tried to tell him it wouldn’t work....”
“So who are you? You weren’t on the station too were you?”
“No, I’m...it’s complicated. Look, let’s get out of here and go somewhere safe, then I’ll tell you everything you want to know.” She turned to the guardsman and spoke to him, also in fluent Mandarin. Talena begun to feel distinctly separate.
The guard led them down a passage, then into a corridor. Finally they emerged onto an outer wall where they could observe the chaos below. Soldiers were everywhere, some fighting, some running, some standing around.
Suddenly the doors to the palace, which most of the soldiers had been guarding was flung open, and the Emperor himself appeared flanked by Hauritz, Cade, and others. The Emperor started speaking, but Talena couldn’t understand a word until Lucille started whispering translations in her ear.
“The traitor is slain! He would have murdered me, your Emperor, the divinely chosen of heaven! Fortunately he was stopped. Now kneel, followers of the traitor, renounce your allegiance and you will be spared!”
Now the coup had failed those guards who had supported Wanli did indeed kneel, all except a few diehards who were cut down.
The Emperor threw the head of his own son down the stairs so the gory shape bounced and landed at the bottom.
Hauritz whispered something to the Emperor, and Tianshun nodded.
“All hail the Emperor! All bow before his will!” Hauritz called and knelt, rather theatrically. Soon the Emperor stood alone at the centre of a ring of his subjects.
Lucille turned away and muttered something in French. Talena remembered just enough to understand her. “Like a puppet manipulated by a master.”



XXX

The coup to overthrow the Emperor was a naïve and misguided attempt by his easily led son to overthrow the power of the advisors. Hauritz, or Hong Wei as he styled himself, was disliked by many in the court and the wider society. His clear and direct influence over the Emperor made him a target of fear and jealousy at a time when the nation needed to be focused on survival.
In the aftermath of the coup thousands of ‘rebels’ were executed, and the peasants were repressed further. Money was needed for the suppression and maintenance of the Chinese empire in South Eastern Asia, and more and more the peasants of the Ming Chinese Empire were being bled dry and driven to destituteness. More and more they rebelled, only to be brutally suppressed in turn.

It was clear that events were on a knife-edge, and that something had to give eventually....

Well now, this will be an update which I think might surprise some people. Of course, they might hate it too, and that's fine. Please give me your thoughts.

This is a rather wordy update, with no gameplay or pictures. You have been warned.

Chris Taylor: No! Don't kill my Lucy!
Dewirix: Yes, the second one. I had actually considered the first one...but it wouldn't be a game of EU3 then, so I went with the amoral power grabbing.
adamclason: Re Hauritz; that's more likely. He wants to build a great Chinese Empire so he can conquer as much of the world as he wants. As it turns out, Lucille is actually a Valois by birth....
Razgriz: Well, yes, but even in this story there are more of them around, just not direct in line to the throne. As it turns out...she's even older.
TheExecuter: No...it was something I considered, but I'd already established that Talena couldn't have children, so I had to stick with that. Now that I think about it, having a child might have been an interesting thing to add to the story. We'll see what happens.
Chris/Zhang/Adam: Yes, since Valois is a place in France that is certainly possible that there would be others of her name. Still, the truth is stranger.
blsteen: Trouble indeed...in the form of anarchy and war!
morningSIDEr: Haha! Glad you liked that line. I do try to sprinkle stuff throughout. I think Hauritz will indeed regret crossing her.
Boris: I figured as much! Thanks for posting!

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TIANSHUN II PART 4

XXX

8/6/1510

The small fortress villa just outside the city of Fuzhou had its own private army. That was what Talena first noticed as they approached. It had been a month and a half of constant danger, but led by the man in the armour of an Imperial Guard and Lucille herself they had not run into serious trouble.
They were soon spotted, and a squad of cavalry rode over to investigate the three travellers.
There was a tense conversation in Chinese for a moment before the leader of the soldiers laughed and pointed to the villa, seeming happy with the answer he had received.
“We are expected. I am a friend of his Lord, the District Commissioner of this entire region. He is a man of great power, from the Shang family, the local elites,” Lucille explained.
“You sure have all this worked out,” Talena said, impressed.
“That’s my job!” Lucille replied happily.
Talena trailed the blonde woman. She had discovered on their march that Lucille did not have the same powers of instant regeneration as she and Cade did. Instead, she had a different sort of power, a confidence and an experience in how to get what she wanted easily.

Inside the villa they waited in a courtyard until a young man exited the main building and approached them. He looked absurdly young to Talena, but he bore himself with considerable dignity. At his side was a beautiful woman, evidently his wife. As they saw the guard who had come with Talena and Lucille all the way from the capital of Peking they smiled and offered an embrace.
At Talena’s puzzled look Lucille explained. “This is Houlong Shang, his wife Chiyoko, and their cousin Jin Wen. I’ll have to lend you my translator which I have here. I guess you don’t have the one I sent you?”
“Cade took it off me. Sorry. He’s got my gun too.”
“No matter. Wait one moment.” She talked with Houlong, sometimes gesturing to Talena, others making expressive gestures. Cao Wen would often interject or agree with Lucille until finally they seem to have made their point.
“He says we should go rest and relax. You have a lot of questions for me, no doubt.”



A servant showed them upstairs into the palace, and soon baths had been drawn and Talena could actually relax in comfort for the first time in years. Indeed, not since she’d been in Vijayanagar some ten years before had she had luxury.
When she was washed, dried and changed into new clothes she met Lucille in a semi-outdoor area where the summer sun was partly shaded by cloth and wood partitions.
Lucille spoke to a servant, who brought Talena some tea, and then settled down to face her. “Well, ask away.”
“Why did you never come and talked to me in Vijayanagar?” Talena asked.
“I wasn’t sure whose side you were on, whether you were working with Hauritz. I decided to meet you in Pegu with Quan, but something came up, namely the report that the Chinese had strange and terrible weapons. I’m sorry I didn’t meet you sooner.”
“Well in that case who are you? You certainly weren’t on the space station. I’d never seen you before in my life.”
“That’s because I wasn’t there and I hadn’t met you before. I’m rather separate from that. I am an agent, someone who tries to keep time from getting messed up and off the rails.”
Talena gave her a lopsided look. “Good job,” she added ironically.
Lucille sighed. “Yes, well, in your case, your little sojourn has royally buggered up everything. This version of history is so volatile that its branched off from the normal track completely. That’s something it shouldn’t do! I’m not the only one, but unfortunately my three predecessors have been killed by Hauritz and co.”
“So if you say you’re some sort of agent, then that means this must happen a lot? I mean, time travel and stuff. Why did I never know about it?”
“Because when history changes you never know about it unless you are there when it happens and can remember what it was before. It’s happened before, a lot of times.”
“Such as?”
Lucille shrugged. “Timur was not originally in the timeline. Trust me, that caused as big a stuff up as this.”
Talena just stared at her new friend for a moment, and then nodded. “I see. So what are we going to do?”
“That’s a good question. Because all of you came back in the way you did it’s causing problems. I’m not entirely sure how to fix it. I can’t take you out of this time without blowing a hole in reality.”
“So basically you’ve got to kill us?” Talena asked flatly.
Lucille shook her head. “No. It’s not going to be like that,” she said firmly.
“Well, whatever. So what next?”
“We’ve got to get Hauritz and the other two out of power. Restore, at least partially, the balance. It’s my job. Remove irregularities.”
“I want revenge on them for betraying me, imprisoning me. I’ll help you.”
“Thank you, Talena. But you have to promise me that you won’t take power, or influence rulers. We need to work together here.”
“Alright, Lucille. Done.”

Silence settled over the patio for a few moments before Talena spoke again. “So...you’re de Valois. Does that mean you’re related to...?”
“People always ask that,” Lucille said with a smirk. “As if there was only one group of people ever called that.”
“Oh, sorry,” Talena said, embarrassed.
“As it is, I AM related to the Kings of France, but it doesn’t mean I had to be!” Lucille added happily. “I’m a relation of the first Valois King of France, Philip. Not an especially close one, mind, but enough to be partly royal and a minor noble.”
Talena looked surprised. “So you’re actually from what...the 14th century? So are you immortal like me?”
“I don’t age, but I’m not like you in the other senses, no. I am a member of a group known as the Order of Aurelius, and part of that is having your life extended until you wish to retire, or until you are no longer able to do your job.”
“So how old are you?”
“It’s not polite to ask a lady her age!” Lucille teased. She considered though. “Four hundred and thirty seven, I think.”
“You think?” Talena asked, unable to say anything else. Staggered by what Lucille had said.
“It gets hard to keep track of days and years going through time. You’ll get used to it, Talena. Eventually.”
“That’s not very reassuring....”