East of the River: Home of the Sun Clan sample (Act I) -- T. P. M. Thorne

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1

“…A force to fight a… a ‘nationwide peasant rebellion’…?”
The words were part of the mass of bewildered murmurings that could be heard around the public noticeboard in the town of Fuchun, which was located in Wu Prefecture, Yang Province in the southeast of China. Few could scarcely believe it, but the words were true: the Han Empire was now enveloped by chaos caused by the rise of a popular sect called the ‘Way of Peace’ and the beginnings of militant action by the million-or-more followers of that sect, action that was gradually being dubbed the ‘Yellow Turban Rebellion’.
“What should I do?” another voice asked: the question was echoed across the small crowd. The noticeboard carried a call to arms that had been issued by the court in the Han Imperial capital Luoyang: its significance was impossible to overstate.

As always, the world as a whole was enduring change. The vast Roman Empire to the west of China was entering the fourth year of rule by Emperor Commodus, an era that is seen by many scholars as the beginning of the end; in the Parthian Empire to the north of China, Vologases IV was into his fourth decade of rule over a nation that was very stable by contrast. The Chinese Han Empire had enjoyed some trade with Parthia and was looking to trade with Rome, but that was now a faded dream. Two decades of corrupt government had weakened the incumbent emperor Ling, and after a failed military campaign against the warrior-tribal Xianbei Empire on its northern border, famines and economic mismanagement had finally pushed many of the desperate people to their limits and inadvertently forced them to seek salvation in the ‘Way of Peace’.

“What can anyone here do?” was another question that was being asked, although it was thought rather than spoken in most cases.

The southeast region of the Han Empire was far from the wealthiest, but it had its share of strong and tenacious people: they had to be. Rain battered the land nigh-on unendingly, and vast, hostile marshlands lined the banks of the winding Yangtze River that bisected the country and gave part of the region another name: ‘Jiangdong’, or ‘East of the River’. Other, smaller rivers caused further natural division, and the constant threat of the pirates that all but ruled those waterways was a permanent pressure on the exhausted and under-resourced administration. But the situation was made all the worse by the social divides between north and south.
“Let the northerners sort it out, it’s their problem,” was another common sentiment. The capital and the influential nobles were mostly - if not all - based to the north of the winding Yangtze River, while the south suffered industrial underdevelopment and general neglect. It could still be said that there was an administrative framework in what was known to the capital as southern Yang Province, but opportunities for advancement would almost certainly mean a move to the north.

A low-ranking official left his place of work and walked to the noticeboard for the second time that day: he had made a decision that would affect not only the rest of his life, but the entire country for the next nine decades.

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