***

Architecture of The Dancing Stone.

From the ancient, extinct Rekadian civilisation, the Dancing-Stone Architects had been rediscovered in recent times, their phantoms preserved by dungeons recounting the rise and downfall of Rekadia. The Architects had been expert hybrid-support troops trained in three Classes. An Earth-elemental-spec Shaman for the primary base Class was supplemented with secondary Civilian Classes of Landworking and Construction. Each of these separately had abilities for modifying terrain or structures. The Architects combined this multi-Class moveset to fulfil a sapper or combat-engineer function, erecting cover from missiles, laying traps, fixing ladders, breaching defences. Clips of the style's most talented practitioners had been popular for a while, the best Architects having a mesmerising quality like a musical as they controlled their dancing cast of dirt and wood and rubble.

For Henry's guild, this discovery had led to a drastic reconfiguration of the Chayokan, NPC army.

Previously, the sapper-duties for Henry's armies were performed by specialised non-combat units controlled at the level of a 200-man company. In comparison, the Architects had been integrated into the Rekadian army's basic 6-man squad - they took up a typical slot for a healer, a role which they blended with their sapping, doing a bit of both. Always having some building capabilities granted Rekadian squads immense independence, their units being able to assault or defend positions unassisted. The usual downside of this hybridisation, the diminished healing capacity, was overcome through Rekadian squads undergoing rigorous practice in coordinating with their Architects. A number of advanced squad-level tactics had evolved around the sapper moveset, like building small towers for spellcasters to move laterally out of Energy Dead Zones or telekinetically-directing fences to split an enemy force for a couple seconds, buying a moment to heal or kill an isolated enemy. Squads who'd perfected these manoeuvres fought with a disruptive stop-start rhythm that was overwhelming for an undisciplined or unfamiliar opponent.

Several teams of Henry's military researchers, inspired by the superb Rekadian model, had vouched for their integration, and, after an experimental trial with some modifications—including an adaptation to a 12-man basic squad unit—it'd become a standard part of the army, one of the many, many keys in The Company's success.

Today, with other people imitating their guild, the Architects had become a common support-type at the higher levels of Saana. Their little morphing tornados of soil and stone could often be seen ripping up dungeons and group arenas.

And now, for Henry's martial arts climb, he would repurpose this transformative group style for the 1v1.

He tested fusing Dancing-Stone Architecture with several fighting approaches. When spell kiting, the obstacles could be used like caltrops to create space from a pursuer - like he'd done with the logs against The Redeemer, but more up-close, faster. In the melee, going faster still, the path of a thrust could be disguised within walls of shifting debris, enemy punches intercepted by a timely slab of rock. For this developmental process, the previous experience with The Laughing Son's proved very useful. Accustomed to pretending combat-gags had real effects, he was now able to easily emulate an Earth Shaman's moveset despite having only limited access to it through his Spelltomes.

In the background of studying this art was the general consideration of which Class he would one day develop A Thousand Tools for. The complex manoeuvres possible with Dancing-Stone Architecture had qualified Earth Shamans as of the primary candidates. There were many other possibilities, some of which had already appeared—his former dart-blowing Back Alley-Chef Cutthroat or his current multi-Tome Scholar Primary—and others which were still to come, like a Qi Master variant that'd been favoured for Twenty Tools or a Bloodmancer melee-hybrid based around demonic transformations.

33 months later, with the cessation of his dance with the stone, the Earth Shaman was eliminated from contention. Henry, ultimately, couldn't make the Class's extra utility justify the other abilities it sacrificed for a 1v1. It was mathematically more efficient to be a Fire Shaman like Caramel and just stab the enemy. As was to be expected on occasion with research, the initial theory hadn't been supported by the data. Sigh.

On the bright side, he did formulate an independent system of material-obstruction-juggling with Landworker-Constructionist skills that could be applied to any style or Martial Class as long as one met the measly requirement of 167 Mental GQ.

***

While progressing with his martial arts and literary climbs, Henry continued as planned to investigate Karnon in his spare hours, fleshing out the trickster's chronology of events and antics.

The Laughing Man's death in 2293 BP merely initiated The Togavian Liberation.

After devouring the father, Karnon gathered the other Sons in attendance at the party—of whom 13 were alive in this era—sobered them up, and gave each instructions for the next step. Temporarily suppressing news of Viceroy Lamin's expiration, they spread out across Togavi to meet with key members of the Maalundi occupation in various provinces, being welcomed without suspicion due to having often been sent by The Laughing Man on such errands. On a set date, they carried out their assassinations, decapitating the Maalundi leviathan in one strike. From there, they incited their Togavian countrymen to revolt against their oppressors.

Amongst historians, little attention had been paid to this problem, but the locals had lacked any semblance of rebellious will after an eternity of subjugation. Henry, who'd collated the most comprehensive body yet of witness testimonies of Karnon's pranks, discovered something new. The young trickster, in anticipation of the plot, had been agitating the community by pushing his pranks overly far, brutalising and tormenting the citizens. The contradiction of him leading the rebellion was initially resolved by not informing aggrieved factions that he was. Later, The Sons shoved all responsibility for their misdeeds on The Laughing Man, who was too dead to defend himself.

Globally, the first to learn of Viceroy Lamin's death and the insurrection was a Maalundi colony in the Basindi state of Jingzi, roughly 400 kilometres south of Togavi. This colony was governed by The Turtle King Viceroy Bambale, a Tier-9 Beast Tamer Smallgod with a giant turtle for a companion. Bambale, wanting to curry favour with Glorious Seekuba, staged an invasion to quell the rebels and regain the territory. The specifics of his demise remain shrouded in mystery, but his turtle companion, Sahali, was spotted shortly afterwards swimming back to Jingzi alone, and Karnon, by his next public appearance, had ranked to a Tier-8 Halfgod, presumably having gained power from his second Viceroy kill.

News of this incident heightened the notoriety of Karnon to his neighbours. Detractors who'd dismissed Viceroy Lamin's death as a fluke were silenced, and other brownnosers with similar aspirations to the slain Turtle King cancelled their plans.

In the Maalundi capital, the nobles held their breath in wait for Emperor Seekubaa's answer. And when he gave it, all were astonished by its volume.

The reclamation of Togavi was assigned to the empire's Central Fleet, led by four Tier-9 Smallgods and a Tier-10. This already sizeable force was joined by The Emperor's third son, also Tier-10, a war-compatriot and closeted lover of The Laughing Man. The other Maalundi nobles considered this allocation excessive. Although Togavi represented a vital chokepoint for their shipping to the Central-continent nations, their opponent was still a small sect of drugged-up wastrels whose strongest member had only recently broken into Tier-8. Would one command an entire battalion to exterminate a single nest of rats? But Glorious Seekubaa—who would have known the real competency of The Laughing Man, whom he'd exiled to suppress his growth—took no chances with the Son that'd surpassed the father.

And as it would turn out, his answer had been inadequate.

According to the daughter of a Maalundi court noble who later interned as a monastic scribe in Volefa, The Third Prince, the sole survivor of the ill-fated expedition, had barged into the palace and begun blubbering that Karnon had stopped them mid-route. The young rebel had intercepted their fleet on his own, waving from a one-man raft of straw so flimsy it couldn't cross a puddle let alone the violent seas. When the Maalundi Gods paused to discuss the trick, their vessels were suddenly battered by a giant sea-serpent. Karnon had somehow managed to control this monster without Beast Tamer magic, allowing it to retain the raw, unneutered might of the sea's wild denizens. This was Sarff's debut.

Although Sarff was lower-levelled than the Maalundi Gods and theoretically weak enough for their navies to handle, such monsters being a frequent encounter during naval voyages, Karnon had made the rash decision to give the monster Sentience. This gift enabled it to disregard the predictable fight patterns on which naval human-vs-monster battles relied and instead use hit-and-run tactics, ignoring the humans to destroy their ships. Moreover, Karnon had persuaded his liberated population to convert their worship to the serpent, channelling their power to it through God Energy. (Henry felt this could be a noteworthy choice. To bolster any creature in this way had been an act of inconceivable sacrilege since The Redeemer's global genocide, although the over four thousand years that'd passed since The Age of Beasts had caused the memories and anxiety that'd driven the prohibition to fade.)

Against Sarff's amplified assault, the Maalundi ships were sunk. The Maalundi Gods, unstoppable on soil, became easy pickings once forced to wade water. Only The Third Prince was permitted to leave as a gesture of a hoped-for reconciliation with The Emperor.

The monastic scribe's retelling finished there, Seekubaa ejecting everyone but his advisors. The rest, however, could be deduced from context and subsequent events.

With the naval route cut-off, Glorious Seekubaa would have to retake Togavi in person by travelling there using the flight ability granted upon becoming a Tier-11 Lowgod. Wiping out the rebellion by himself would not itself be troublesome, but him abandoning his capital for so long would expose it to an attack by The All-Mother, who could perform a similar annihilation during his absence. Karnon— having prepped the Rangbitan Goddess to anticipate this potential opening—proposed to Seekubaa through terms presented by The Third Prince an alternative to mutual destruction. In exchange for independence, the Togavians would allow Maalundi's ships free passage through their ports, and they would grant the Emperor rights of first purchase of most exports, along with exclusive purchase for key resources until alternative sources had been found.

The Maalundi Emperor, a wise sovereign versed in the cold game of realpolitik, acquiesced without a grudge, but only after adding several stipulations. One of these was that neither the blue-haired rebel nor his sea-serpent would ever gain another level, that both would remain locked in the ninth-tier they'd reached after devouring his navy. The punishment for breaking this agreement and forcing the Maalundi Emperor to put his domain at risk would be a complete genocide of Togavi.

Glorious Seekubaa himself publicised this last threat in a declaration bestowing freedom to The Sons and their homeland.

In the year 2287, after six years of rebellion, The Togavians quietly celebrated the alien experience of independence by renaming the former capital Karnonia, after their young liberator and newly elected king.

The four centuries after, labelled The Age of Wine, was to be Togavi's zenith. Throughout this period, The Sons established a government, which, restricted by the Maalundis from developing militarily, devoted its energy to civil administration and domestic industry.

Under The Sons' management, Togavi blossomed. The country had been historically colonised for its resource-rich highlands. When this extracted wealth was finally utilised for the benefit of the natives, a positive growth-cycle began. Better-trained, better-equipped labourers collected better resources for crafting better equipment. Advanced industries popped up, like the manufacturing of many sweet tulip wines that came to be a beloved luxury across the Maalundi sphere and which granted this era its name.

From the material wealth was born an intellectual wealth. Togavi had many pluses for it on the global stage. It was politically neutral, it had a young-nation's vivacity and openness, unspent chests of platinum, and its location was central to the major hubs of Maalundi, Heimland, Aion Laisije, and Basindi. These features attracted foreign artists, scholars, and artisans to the isles, intellectual refugees trying to detach from the cultural cobwebs of their homelands. Uniting with the locals and inspired by the mythos of The Laughing Sons, this intelligentsia forged an original Togavian aesthetic, one whose highest virtues were freedom, youth, cosmopolitanism, irreverent humour, and a splash of hedonism. This aesthetic in turn became the national identity.

Togavi was not alone in its growth. In the middle of this era, the Maalundi-Rangbit conflicts, after an extended stalemate, entered a phase of cold war. Both empires refocused on a technological arms race to find the chariot, the iron sword, the rifle, the aircraft carrier, the A-bomb with which they might prevail over their enemy. In this phase of expansion, the number of deities around the globe multiplied twenty-fold, especially those in the crafts. Several of The Sons went on to out-level Karnon and Sarff, the two of them stifled by The Maalundi Emperor's restriction.

But Karnon, never complaining about the arrangement, did grow in other respects. The wiry azure-haired teen, commonly sighted by sailors riding his serpent friend in open waters, fleshed out into a giant of a man towering well over 7 feet. Noble families began to bicker and feud about whose daughter would get to wed their young ruler. Karnon, with the mature wisdom of King Solomon offering to split the baby, solved the issue by marrying a ferret. An ordinary, non-monster, non-magical ferret, the first queen of Togavi tragically passed from old age before her ninth birthday. He then wed a rabbit, starting a practice of sham marriages that would persist over the centuries. The nation might've worried over a lack of heir to their throne, but hundreds of blue-haired children had begun popping up around the islands, Karnon's mischievous seed being potent and liberally spread. Rumours also claimed sightings of azure-haired ferrets, possums, lynxes, and even cactuses. (Henry'd been unable to confirm this last assertion, all the stories he'd checked being drunken fabrications. Considering he'd watched Karnon impregnate a tornado, though, cross-species offspring didn't seem too far fetched. There were certainly verified pranks in later centuries in which the libidinous God slept with animals, hundreds of them.)

The younger Togavian generations, weaned on this era of gold and wine, forgot their king's past and viewed him as a comical figure, a puppet beholden to his stronger brothers. The world of Saana, however, contained many older folk, and their memory was long. During the jubilee for his 300th anniversary of accession, Karnon was publicly ambushed by a party of six Tier-10 Rangbitan assassins sent courtesy of The All-Mother. He survived the attempt, but at the cost of three of the other Sons, including the cross-dressing Alchemist Tshuaj, with whom he'd been closest after The Tinkerer's passing. Finishing off the assailants, Karnon himself rose to Tier-10.

A brief crisis followed in which the country prepared for Seekubaa's promised annihilation. The threat, however, was resolved when a Maalundi envoy arrived with The Emperor's condolences. In the three centuries that'd passed since the rebellion, Togavi had earned some goodwill for their compliance and contributions to the mutual prosperity.

It was to be a completely different source that annihilated Togavi. In 1911, The Age of Wine concluded with the manifestation of the Maelstrom that engulfed Maalundi, snuffing out the brilliant flame of the once domineering empire forever.