On Qu Yuan and the Loss of the Great Dragons
(Forbidden Book)
It’s rare for any book banned by the Divine Inquisition to have an actual printing history. Bad genre fiction aside, once something gets to the publishers it’s generally deemed too late to suppress it without somebody noticing. In this particular case, the Host was fortunate in that the printer was a reclusive 19th Century enthusiast who had expired, gone to Heaven, and idly mentioned that at his time of death he had been in the process of printing a tome that purported to explain why there were no more dragons. A team was promptly dispatched to destroy the unfinished print run, not to mention wreck the printing press itself. There was a faint chance that an ethereal with the right configuration of strands might be able to somehow reconstruct the book from the press, or at least the True title of the book. This was deemed too risky to permit.
As the above suggests, On Qu Yuan and the Loss of the Great Dragons is not the actual title of the original work (which supposedly only exists in Yves’ Library, and only available to those with a legitimate need-to-know). The gist of the text is available in abstract form, carefully filtered and rewritten to remove whatever ‘flavor’ might have lingered from the original (more security). Copies of the abstract are not permitted off of the celestial plane, and are certainly forbidden to be brought on the ethereal plane.
This may seem somewhat paranoid, but an examination of even the abstract explains why the necessity for this much care. The document narrates the circumstances of the death of Qu Yuan, a Chinese poet and minister of the third century BC. Before his exile, Qu Yuan was associated with one of the Seven Warring States that existed prior to the establishment of the Qin Dynasty. He is renowned in Chinese history for his skill in poetry and his devotion to his country; the latter was what killed him. Upon hearing that the capital had been conquered, the poet wrote what would be his final work and committed suicide via drowning. The efforts of others to save him eventually resulted in the Duan Wu festival, which involves boat racing and offerings of food to river dragons.
So far, so mundane. But it’s the esoteric aspects of On Qu Yuan and the Loss of the Great Dragons that is of interest. The book makes it clear that Qu Yuan was what modern usage would refer to as a Soldier for the Chinese gods. His falling from favor and eventual suicide was part of a long-term campaign to determine what influences would be paramount over the newly-formed Imperial Chinese dynasty. Qu Yuan’s faction lost on both a physical and metaphysical level: the Qin Dynasty was notoriously hostile to anything that did not fit its rather legalistic and ruthless view of the world, and lasted just long enough to permanently influence all future dynasties. Qu Yuan apparently realized that this would happen, and devised a plan to ameliorate matters.
What was at issue was who was to have ultimate control over the ethereal Chinese spirits known as ‘dragons’. Qin Shi Huang, the Qin king (and soon to be Emperor) was obsessed with control of water (which is, of course, the primary element associated with dragons); and his obvious plan to associate itself with the Yellow Emperor argued that a further correspondence was in the works. Like many Chinese officials, Qu Yuan was simultaneously drawn to both Confucian and Taoist thinking, and he devised a way by which he could guarantee the independent existence of dragons. The poet crafted the metaphysical equivalent of a legal document that ‘bound’ the dragons to him, personally. The quotes are in place because Qu Yuan’s end of the bargain was that he could not himself command the dragons to do anything; they were made independent of any human influence (including, emphatically, that of the Qin Dynasty). Qu Yuan then voluntarily gave himself to the water in order to power the agreement, briefly manifested as a Ghost in order to instruct the local villagers in the best way to maintain what rituals would be useful to sustain the effect, and then ascended to the Chinese afterlife through sheer force of Will. The Qin Dynasty, stopped at the onset from acquiring access to the water-based power offered by dragons, instead tried to access earth-based power; but terra-cotta figurines, liquid mercury and burying Confucian scholars alive were not enough to keep the dynasty operating for more than a few decades.
And all of that is just what can be found in the abstract. The full text explains in clear and concise detail how Qu Yuan did all of this, indicates six of the most likely major mistakes that somebody trying to recreate the original pact might make, discusses how to adapt the rituals to the modern era, and finally engages in some exceptionally worrisome and informed speculation on Why Dragons Don’t Exist Anymore, not to mention How To Bring Them Back. It, in fact, does everything except provide a list of ingredients.
This book was thus a real problem for the Host. The continuing nonexistence of dragons is one of the more potent symbols of Heaven’s power over the ethereal gods; having them come back would not be a disaster, but it would be a serious blow to prestige (which concerns the angels working in the ethereal plane as much if not more as it would their superiors). It has not yet been established that the ritual listed in On Qu Yuan and the Loss of the Great Dragons would counteract whatever-it-is that keeps dragons from existing permanently in the Symphony, but the consensus of the best researchers Heaven has is that the possibility is there, and that it’s a good one.
Fortunately, the Horde has not really become involved. Most of Hell simply doesn’t care, and the ones that do usually approve of the lack of dragons anyway. Therefore, the Host simply keeps an eye out to make sure that no corporeal copies exist, that nobody takes a celestial copy outside of the library, and that as few entities as possible know the book’s True name.
Oh, yes, for those wondering: the last time anyone’s seen Qu Yuan was during Uriel’s raid on the Chinese pantheon’s home Domain. He hasn’t since shown up in Heaven and nobody’s reported that he’s shown up in Hell (he wasn’t precisely a candidate for that anyway), so what happened to him is anyone’s guess. Although most people in the know assume that whatever did happen to him must have included getting at least a nodding familiarity with the Nineteenth Century publishing industry.
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