Order of the Blazing Sun

"No, no, I never said that the Count had his entire staff executed to cover his tracks. The etching simply suggests—to an imaginative reader—that he might have done so, if he was the kind of person given to doing such

things..."

—Doktor Siegel, Satirical Etcher

^[1b]

Ten years ago, the great poet and champion of the people, Prince Kloszowski, led a revolution on the streets of Altdorf. But the revolution faltered, the people were slaughtered, and the Prince was forced to flee. Ten years later, the Prince has returned to the Empire, and he has learnt much in his absence, and from his previous failures. The people will not be saved by one violent action, no more than a single stab of a sword, no matter how deep it cuts the flesh, can win a war.

Wars are won by attrition, by the slow, grinding establishment of an enemy presence, until the losers can’t remember what they were fighting for anymore. Wars are won by controlling the hearts and minds of the whole nation, not just a small army. Wars are won by words, not steel.

Words are the stock and trade of the Glorious Revolution of the People. The revolutionaries have stopped trying to raise an army and instead have started recruiting a nation. At least, that’s the goal. Until recently, not many people bought the Griffon’s Tail, dismissing it as just another scandal-mongering broadsheet or fanciful tabloid. But the Tail is more than just that. It’s satirical, it’s clever, and it dares to mock the powers that be in a way that’s never been done before. The Tail is so exciting its words are appearing on the stage and the street every day, and are read aloud in half the pubs in the city every night. It’s an underground journal that’s just gone public, and the public are amused. Now, the Tail doesn’t need readers, it needs writers—by the wagonload.^[1a][1b]

Purpose

The mission of the GRP is to subvert the hearts and minds of the people of the Empire to their point of view. They want to teach the people that the concepts of monarchy and nobility are inherently flawed and evil, and lead only to oppression. They want to encourage people to see that the nobles are nothing but humans, and foolish and cruel humans to boot, and their position as rulers is an historical accident, not mandated by the Gods. That kings and princes only acquire power because the people let them have that power—and those same people can take that power away.

To the average Empire peasant, this is a very hard sell, but the Glorious Revolution is prepared to start small.

First of all, they are focusing on the growing (and increasingly more educated) middle classes of the great cities—Altdorf, Nuln, Middenheim, and Talabheim. And before they get to the idea of tearing down the nobility, they have begun with the simple idea of mocking and undermining it. And it is this—the focus on parody over preaching—that has caught the public eye. It also helps that they print a variety of satirical pictures and primitive cartoons, and that theirplays and scripts are now appearing on the stages. Those who cannot afford the plays can see the skits played in the streets, or hear them read aloud by a literate friend over drinks at the pub. This has enabled even the commonest of men to enjoy the comedy of the Griffon’s Tail, and they enjoy it very much. The revolution has begun, and it is spreading like wildfire.

In fact, the Tail has become so successful so quickly it can barely keep up with the demand. What it needs right now is people: writers, artists, reporters, jesters, printers, merchants, runners, messengers, delivery boys, demagogues, bodyguards, and thieves, to help keep up with the demand for issues all across the Empire. So desperate are they for staff they no longer care if all their members are as ardently political as the founders—and at the same time, the issues are now selling enough copies to attract talented staff who will adopt any political bent required of them in order to gain fame or fortune.

But to write for the Tail is to have a price on your head and a dramatically lowered life expectancy, as the paper is becoming a major threat. The nobility, the Temple, the military, and all the powers that be, have all been insulted by the Tail.

Whether seeking personal revenge or because they realize the danger the Tail represents, the powers have declared war. This has driven demand even higher, but has also made getting the Tail out each week harder and harder. Words are the steel of revolution, but they also need real steel—and those who can wield it—to get those words to their audience.

The revolution needs people willing to get their hands dirty with more than ink. In secret, Kloszowski’s war has begun.

History

Prince Vladimir Mikael Kloszowski is a real prince. His mother is the Dowager Princess of Inkodeyna, a small stronghold near the capital of the frozen northern land of Kislev. Fearing that her enemies would use her only male heir to oust her from her husband’s throne, the Princess sent her son away to the Empire to be educated as soon as he could speak their guttural southern tongue. Kloszowski proved to be a good student, absorbing everything he saw around him. And what he saw made him angry.

The moment he left his mother’s palace he was struck by the difference between the poor and the rich, as the Kislev muzhiks slaved in the cold just a few feet from what had been his bedroom. The Empire, he was told as he traveled, was a land of opportunity, where power came from wealth as much as birth, and no man was slave to another. This, he discovered, was a hollow lie, and the poor slaved and died in just the same way they did in his homeland. Bitter and troubled, Kloszowski left his studies and traveled the Empire alone, trying to learn and understand the plight of the people. He wrote poems as he went, sending them back to his old university chums. He was as surprised to hear they had decided to publish them, and even moreso that they were popular. When he came back to Altdorf, he was widely welcomed as a returning hero. His poetry had created a revolution while he had been gone, and he was thrilled to be its champion.

There were other groups amassing at that time. Ulli von Tasseninck and Professor Brustellin had taught their students about the horrific abuses of the nobility. Another Kislevite, Yevgeny Yefimovich, screamed himself hoarse on the streets each day, and the poor believed his every word. When the pattern murders started, Kloszowski wrote a poem called “The Ashes of Shame” which implied what they all knew: that the murderer was a noble making sport with the common folk, a symptom of the sickness that entrapped them all. Two days later, Yefimovich printed the poem in a pamphlet that was soon being read in every tavern in the city. That night, the revolution began and Altdorf burned. But in the chaos of the fires and the fog and the random violence of the Altdorf mobs, the revolution became nothing but another riot. The destruction went rampant, and in the subsequent investigation, it was the revolutionaries who were blamed, especially when Yefimovich was revealed to be a mutant with dark powers. Brustellin was murdered, Tasseninck beheaded, and Kloszowski fled to Tilea, turning his poetry to the more delicate art of seduction as a way to shake off his bitterness and disappointment.^[1b][1c]

But he could never stop his revolutionary heart. He returned to his scholarly ways, reading works from the libraries of Tilea and Estalia as he traveled those lands. As he observed the power of the Myrmidian Cult and read the examples of the wise Goddess herself, he saw how great words could unite people and win battles. Although still an atheist, he took the example of Myrmidia as a way in which he could bring true revolution to the people, through educating them. And he knew from his days as a poet the best way to educate people was without them knowing it—by hiding revolution behind comedy and tragedy.

He returned to the Empire with a new mission, and a reborn zeal. He would create a free press that published on a weekly basis. Once, his poems had brought a revolution overnight. If that kind of writing entered the culture of the Empire each week, every week, soon some people would not be able to think otherwise. And when enough people thought that, it wouldn’t be a revolution anymore, because it would be the status quo.

There were others who quickly joined his cause. Although not in as many numbers, he was once again welcomed as a hero back to Altdorf. His poem about the slaughter during the Fog Riots, “The Blood of Innocents,” had become another underground classic in his absence, and a clutch of hard-core fans and adherents remained. From them, he drew a group of writers, scribes, and etchers. With the fortune he had made in Estalia, he recruited a dwarfen printer and rented a tiny basement room near the docks. A month later, the first issue of the Griffon’s Tail was printed.

The GRP Today

For the first eight months the Tail gradually gained an audience on the streets of Altdorf, although not a very large or impressive one. Then something amazing happened. On a whim, Kloszowski penned a short play for an issue, in which Grand Marshall Kurt Helborg and Emperor Karl-Franz discussed how useful it was that the young warrior Valten had died during the Siege of Middenheim. A week later, the Angry Goblin Theatre Company performed the sketch on the stage in the run-down Arena Inn. The next night, the Inn was packed, and a week later, the Angry Goblin Theatre Company was performing it at the Sinner’s Stage. A week after that, half the theatres in the city were running it between acts, and clamouring for the Tail to run new scripts. Older issues resurfaced, and Kloszowski’s humorous poems and haranguing editorials were recited as well. In a month, Kloszowski—still writing under the pseudonym “The Tail Puller”—had become the toast of the town. He had always wanted to be a great dramatic poet, but had found fame as the satirist of his age.

By the time the nobility caught on, it was already too late. Noblemen and women were already going out (in poor disguises) to catch these scandalous plays or purchase the pamphlets. When the militia raided the Hanged Man Theatre and arrested the entire cast, it only increased the popularity of the works.^[1c][1d]

Whilst a dozen actors rot in Mundsen Keep, half a hundred now clamor for the chance to also suffer such a wonderfully romantic fate. Young sons and daughters are ordered never to sully their minds with such things, but their parents sneak out “only to see what all the fuss is about.” Priests and zealots decry the terrible sins of these heretical works that dare to mock the Gods themselves, whilst pastors hand copies around their choirs for a good laugh. The dam has burst, and only the extermination of the Tail’s writers and organisers can stop the flow.

Desperate to meet the rising demand but keen to protect the safety of his staff and himself, Kloszowski did not expand his tiny operation. Rather, he gave leave for others to set up their own basement publication houses. There are now three Tails in Altdorf: The Griffon’s Tail, the original; Tail of the University, working the north side of the city; and Tail of the Gods, serving the area near the Grand Temple of Sigmar to the west. Each edition has its own staff of writers, etchers, and printers, its own content, and its own delivery routes, and some people love to collect all three and compare them. In a few pubs, discussions and minor brawls have broken out over which edition is the best. Meanwhile, Kloszowski has also sent his students out to Middenheim, Talabheim, and Nuln to repeat what he’d done in Altdorf.

Kloszowski initially wrote letters to keep in contact with the editors of each edition, but eventually instead published another, private, journal titled The Rising Whisper. This helps keep the groups in contact with each other and, more importantly, keeps them inspired. Each issue of the Whisper is filled with Kloszowski’s inflammatory diatribes, encouraging editors and staff to keep up the fight and not lose hope. Truth be told, this often falls on deaf ears, for as many are drawn to the Tail for fame and fortune as they are due to political zeal. But it is dangerous, and increasingly so, to work for the Tail, so Kloszowski’s urgings for security are always well heeded.

So far, the nobles and the Watch have been stymied in part by the fact that there are simply no existing laws against publishing. Individual works and books can be condemned as illegal or heretical but the Tail changes its content every week. In times past, there might have been only fifty copies of a book—heavy, vellum-bound things that few could hide—so burning them all was no great problem. But a thousand single pieces of paper cannot be controlled that way, so no laws exist to do so. Plays too can be banned, players charged, and playwrights executed, but the writers of the Tail remain anonymous and the directors can honestly say they have no idea who writes them.

Watchmen can typically only arrest actors and sellers for disturbing the peace or causing civil unrest, which results in a fine or a night in the cells. The stars of the Hanged Man got a year for Sedition and Treachery but as the popularity of the works grows, lawyers are finding it harder to make such charges stick. It is difficult to argue that lampooning the nobility is illegal when half the audience are nobles. Destruction is another solution: play sets can be broken up, stalls smashed, ink bottles and papers seized, and paper-sellers evicted, but the writers themselves manage to continue. That said, not all Watchmen need laws, and more than one patrol has been paid handsomely to beat Tail-sellers until their skulls caved in. Other nobles have payed assassins or street gangs to take revenge for the insults printed about them.

Recently, the Grand Theogonist declared the Tail “a clear and present threat against the sanctity and security of the Holy Cult of Sigmar.” This stops short of labeling the journal heretical, but it has allowed zealots and knights to step in where the watch or militias have failed. Of course, many such types had already done so off their own bat, and community Temples and splinter groups continue to raise angry protest about the mockery of their sacred beliefs. When the Altdorf Watch seized a large stack of paper and ink but let the student carrying them go without a charge, Sigmarite justice moved swiftly to “correct” the mistake right there on the streets. A riot was prevented, and the student put in the cells for his own safety—but he was murdered the next day upon his release. The Watch failed to investigate. One less trouble-making writer is one less day’s work for them.^[1d][1e]

Which is the real danger for the Tail: They have so far escaped the condemnation of the law, but they also get no protection from it whatsoever. They have no recourse when their members are beaten or murdered or their stock destroyed, except to find a new hiding place or a better disguise. What’s more, although the paper is growing as a whole, the individual editions are small and fragile affairs. If two or three sellers get beaten in a week, it may take a month for a paper to find a replacement brave enough to walk the streets again. Which raises the other issue hanging over the head of the Tail: money.^[1e]

Despite the popularity of the paper, selling it can still be a struggle, and distributed with the Rising Whisper are purses of funds from Kloszowski’s personal fortune. Kloszowski has realized this can’t last forever, though. He has also realized that capitalism is the key to the success of the Tail on one hand, and to the general freedom of the oppressed classes on the other. Through the fair and even hand of the market, that which the people decide is of the most value shall be given the greatest wealth—a truly perfect society. So Kloszowski stresses in the Whisper that the papers must strive to become self-supporting, and the issue of price is constantly debated. As they can now reach middle and noble class people, they can charge sufficiently to meet their costs, but to do so will exclude their poorer readers, something every proletariat-championing editor is loath to do. In Altdorf, the price is listed as 10p a copy, but it is left up to individual editors (and indeed, sellers) how much is actually charged (and how much is skimmed off the top by the seller).^[1e]

Structure

Without deliberately planning to, Kloszowski developed the Tail into a cunning cell-structure. In each publication house, only the editor is in contact with Kloszowski, and only then through the Rising Whisper. Some have not even met Kloszowski at all, and few know his real name. This is vital for maintaining security, although there are still vulnerabilities. Kloszowski employs horse messengers to send the Rising Whisper to his editors across the land and although he uses people he trusts and pays them fairly well, any of them could lead authorities straight back to the Tail’s editor in chief. And at this point, the organisation definitely could not survive without its founder: the loss of his inspirational words would be crippling to morale, and the loss of his financial support would leave the tiny presses stranded and vulnerable. Not to mention that Kloszowski’s writings appear in at least every second issue and every edition would be hard-pressed to publish without him constantly filling their pages with his brilliant satire, and would find it harder to attract an audience as well.^[1e]

Beneath Kloszowski are the editors. As long as they agree with him on the purpose of the journal and hire talented writers, Kloszowski leaves the running of the paper up to them. There are no written rules or practices for administration or operation. As such, editorial and organisational styles vary wildly across the different editions. Some are fair employers, others are egomaniacal tyrants, and still others treat their writers and staff as equal parts of a creative circle. Some love to whip up scandal, others prefer to focus on content over reaction; some are parsimonious number-crunchers, others leave aside all concerns but the creative; some delegate such responsibilities as they cannot or will not do themselves, others are micromanagers who work themselves into a flurry over every stage of the operation.^[1e][1f]

How well the journal reads and how successfully it operates depends on both the editor and the staff that surrounds him. Due to the high risks of the occupation and the high-pressure nature of the work, the staff can change quite frequently—which produces another security vulnerability. Leaving ex-staff are sworn to the same secrecy as newly joining staff, but there are no checks upon their loyalty. However, not only do staff change regularly but so do locations and operations—there may be little an ex-staffer could tell. More than one edition has been compromised, however, after a writer whose stories were rejected tipped off the Watch, or an ingraver decided he needed more than a weekly pittance for his work.^[1f]

When an editor leaves, he either selects his successor or someone just steps into the role. The successors are usually whomever has the most time, talent, and passion for the project. Since the editor receives no more fame than his writers (often less) and has to fill each issue and run the whole organisation, it is a job only taken by gluttons for punishment, and is a position rarely challenged. Which is not to say that some editions are not riven with interpersonal politics and petty jealousies—sometimes it is the very smallest of honours that brings out the fieriest ambitions.^[1f]

Getting a writing job with the Griffon’s Tail involves impressing the editor with your skills. Given that Kloszowski is a genius and his early associates are practiced professionals, there is a high standard to reach, and competition for space is steep and furious. However, the Tail has a desperate need for staff to do almost everything else. This includes the most basic of tasks, such as standing look out on a street corner or answering the door above the press office in such a way as to not arouse suspicion. They need riders to help their issues get across the city and into the villages beyond it. They need bodyguards to keep their deliveries safe, and smugglers to help their supplies arrive, merchants to help them get good deals, rogues to make sure their secrets stay safe, barkers to sell their wares on the corner, and stooges at the tavern to encourage folk to go and buy them.^[1f]

All who join are sworn to secrecy, but few of the editors know very much about criminal organisation. They may have run the odd “underground” journal at university but again, as the Tail has grown, it has become something on an all together different scale, beyond even Kloszowski’s ability to organise and keep secret. Many editors have considered turning to organised crime for help and tutelage in this manner. Some editors already have.^[1f]

Pending...

Source

• 1 Warhammer Fantasy RPG 2nd ED -- Shades of Empire
  • 1a: pg. 41
  • 1b: pg. 42
  • 1c: pg. 43
  • 1d: pg. 44
  • 1e: pg. 45
  • 1f: pg. 46