Centuries ago, Yosho chased the terror of the galaxy across a fair portion of that galaxy. He fell from the heavens in a rain of fire, fought a duel that shook the land, and sealed a demon in a cave. He saved his tree-partner Funaho from the wreckage of their ship, and set her roots in the soil of their new home. Any one of those actions would have been an epic adventure by itself. After all of them, the crown prince of the mighty Jurai Empire had been ready for a peaceful, quiet existence in a backwater portion of a backwater planet. He hadn’t wanted slaves. He hadn’t wanted to be responsible for anyone else. He wanted to be just another man living his life.
The only responsibility he had foreseen was in making the decision whether or not to have Funaho release the Blessing of Jurai. When a Tree of Jurai rooted itself in a world, not just physically but also in the spiritual flows of the world, it could grant a feeble reflection of the sort of bond he shared with his Tree to all those born on the world. A little genetic tinkering was also required to make the bond possible, which was achieved through a benign virus released along with the Tree’s pollen.
The Blessing granted extended life, rapid healing, and near-immunity to disease to a population. The Blessing, and the fact that the Tree giving the Blessing could also turn it off, were an even greater factor in Jurai’s ability to command the loyalty of other worlds than the powerful Juraian tree ships. The hard part of this decision was the effect that the changes would have on a primitive planet unprepared for such an event. The Blessing included a reduction in fertility to avoid catastrophic population explosions and shifts in gender ratios of births for fine-tuning the birth rate. Springing this on a planet for which the cutting edge of technology often really was the cutting edge of high-quality steel would cause untold havoc. In the end, he concluded that his mother’s world was already ravaged by disease and wars to the point that he could not make the wars worse, and he could do something about the disease. He had expected that to be the last decision he made as a prince rather than an ordinary man.
Unfortunately for him, some people truly are born to greatness and sometimes they find that destiny just wont let go of them. He had tried to pass himself off as just another man. The chaos caused by the destruction of the battle and the further effects of Funaho’s presence had helped him cover his tracks. But one can never cover all signs of one’s passing, and there were some people with the power or insight to at least catch glimpses of power from him, Funaho, or Ryoko’s cave. For his mother’s people the Blessing appeared to have the additional effect of increasing the incidence of magical and psychic gifts. By the time Yosho “died” a few centuries later, he was well known as a mighty warrior-priest and binder of demons.
So people had approached him as students, or as rivals, or as supplicants seeking aid, and the prince once again found himself with responsibility for other people. The most unusual and demanding of these responsibilities were the women he now kept as slaves. Women who were really…
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(Posted Mon, 27 Sep 2004 18:13)
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