Editing Sky Serpents (section)

==Book of Xun==

Elder Brother and Younger Brother were discussing their father.
"Formerly, though great, our father was not perfect," said Younger Brother.
"How dare you speak ill of our father, is it not the son's role to magnify their father's greatness?" responded Elder Brother angrily.
"This is so, but Father's greatness was not in getting gored by the ox, but instead in his exertions in mastery of the plow. Is not cultivation of virtue found in the oneful resolve to correct past errors?" said the Younger.
"But what shall we tell our children?" asked the Elder.
"The truth, lest we have to tell them that their grandfather meant to be gored by the ox."

A rock cannot err, nor can it create. Though the raven is awkward on its feet, it can build a nest, and though the child may tumble, its courage is in rising to walk again.


The Iron Brother dreamt that he was free in the forests of his youth. Whatever he wanted to do, he did, be it swing from vines or wrestle with panthers. In the evenings he ate fresh fruit and clear water. But at night, his sleep was troubled by dreams of war. And in his dream, every day was much the same as the one before it and in the end he learned all the moves of Kultulki the Panther and Bargumba the ape. And each battle was much the same as the day's before.
And he forgot about metal and boxes and empires. When he awoke, he felt them as chains.
The next day, he came to Younger Brother and told him about his dream, his voice echoing and metal, but as he narrated the dream, he paused, and looked at the orchids on the shelf.
"Look, see the orchids? And how the insects crawl skitter skitter on the stems? When I was fast like Oromchi the hawk, I never noticed, but now that I am slower than Belteg the tortoise, and my eyes are not my own, such things I now see! Formerly I could not love the industrious ants, but now how dear they are to me. I do not think I could have loved them with my own eyes."
That night, the Iron Brother dreamt of gardening. He raked the stones and arranged the orchids and made roads and rivers for the ants. He set out the seeing stones and contemplated his day's work and said:
"Insects are good companions because they do not speak.
The osprey's song is sweet because it has no words.
My garden's paths lead in circles.
Back to the round stones in the creek."
He named the garden River-Stone.
(Stromstein 'River-Stone' is the name of one of the biggest fortresses in the Vigil.)

And yeah, Jade Empire doesn't really care about matters of dogma and is more focused on following the Emperor's teachings for humanity. He's more the Buddha or a Daoist sage for them than a proper god. The primarchs and the honored dead are like Bodhisattvas.

And yeah, they use Primarchs both loyalist and traitor in parables and fables.
Xun's writings read like Zhuangzi, connected stories and musings on virtue and how to attain it, featuring the Primarchs and the Emperor in stories both real and fictional.
The Emperor was fallible, after all, the heresy happened, but the Emperor Ascended after his death, as evinced by miracles which have been studied.

Ideally, the Jade Empire should feel like 40k Daoist/Chinese Buddhist thought with the social order coming in through Xun's semi-Confucian ideas of social order.
They're crazy as anyone else in 40k, they just approach it differently.

{{Imperium Asunder}}