Lore – Imperium

Humane yet disposable, honored yet forgotten—the Blood Swallows represent the Imperium’s solution to an age-old problem: how to wage war without spending citizens. These Radi-Human women emerge from Imperial cultivation facilities at biological age nineteen, twin daggers already familiar in their hands, minds filled with glory and purpose. The official position is compassionate: synthetic warriors spare real families from sacrifice. No mother weeps for a Blood Swallow. No father buries his daughter.

Origin

Blood Swallows descend from research stolen during Meiya Ji’s escape from Imperial custody. The genius bio-psi engineer’s original work focused on high-grade Radi-Humans—sapient, powerful, individually cultivated synthetic humans immune to cosmic radiation. Imperial military scientists pursued a different application: mass production of expendable infantry. Because Meiya’s surviving data skewed heavily toward female cultivation protocols, the program produces women exclusively. This limitation is presented as intentional design.

Combat Role

Speed and aggression define Blood Swallow doctrine. Each of these women wields twin Zephyrium Daggers in a style emphasizing relentless offense—multiple strikes per second, constant movement, no pause for defense. Their Radi-Human physiology grants reflexes and stamina above baseline humans, though still surpassed by trained military personnel. Minimal armor means mobility over protection. A Blood Swallow who stops moving dies. Casualties are expected and calculated into deployment planning.

The Virgin Weapon

From emergence, Blood Swallows receive intensive indoctrination alongside combat training. They are taught they represent the Imperium’s highest ideals—beauty, sacrifice, devotion to civilization. They are also kept virgin throughout active service. Radi-Human aging halts until biological age twenty or loss of virginity, whichever comes first. Preserved purity extends combat effectiveness by months, sometimes a full additional year. The justification is tactical, but the effect is isolation. Physical intimacy of any kind is forbidden. Some form deep emotional bonds regardless. These are tolerated but not acknowledged.

Retirement

Approximately 6.9% of Blood Swallows survive past three years of service. By then, normal aging has begun and combat efficiency degrades. The beautiful ones receive “honorable civilian transition” to government-affiliated brothels at below-market contract prices. The work is framed as continued service: you served with your blade, now serve with your body.

Blood Swallows who’ve lost both combat utility and physical appeal simply stop appearing in records. No formal discharge. No pension. No acknowledgment.

Forever Forsaken

Blood Swallows cannot become Supplicants. Mass production strips psionic potential entirely—an intentional cost-saving measure that conveniently prevents them from accessing the Imperium’s primary path to female advancement. Citizens who learn these details rarely dwell on them. The alternative seems obviously worse. And the Blood Swallows themselves believe in their purpose. They die gloriously, most of them. The ones who survive long enough to understand their situation have already aged out of anyone’s concern.

Rust Crows are the Imperium’s baseline ranged infantry—real men, not manufactured, wielding Kinetic Crossbows as scouts and strikers. Before Blood Swallows existed, Rust Crows were THE Imperium soldier. Now they provide ranged cover while Swallows dive in, the two classes forming the backbone of Imperial ground warfare.

Recruitment

Recruitment draws from men who failed academically in Neo-Confucian society or simply have nothing left to lose. Requirements are simple: good health, determination, and willingness to endure. Training is brutal—long-distance running, accuracy under duress, and mental reconditioning to withstand stress without breaking. The result is disciplined soldiers required to maintain respectable manners toward all Imperial citizens, their primal impulses permitted release only in private.

Compensation

Benefits include full tax exemption, government housing, and municipal services. The true draw for many: senior Rust Crows (Sergeant and above) earn the privilege of “evaluating” retiring Blood Swallows before brothel placement. This legal access to virgin or near-virgin women with no emotional complications motivates enlistment despite staggering mortality rates. The promise keeps recruitment numbers steady.

The 6%

Approximately 6% of Rust Crows are female. They receive maternity allowances and often find husbands through service—arguably the least exploited population in the Imperial military system.

Retirement

Veterans who survive to retirement receive benefits. Some become security personnel or live comfortably on savings. Many struggle: years of suppressed impulses and conditioning leave them spending recklessly on brothels and recreational drugs. The Imperium offers a “Civilian Life Reintegration Program” for those wise enough to take it. Those few get something like a good ending.

Field Command

Sergeants and above may assume field command duties, directing both Rust Crow formations and Blood Swallow assault waves.

Peons are male Radi-Humans produced from a 22nd-century cultivation line—the Imperium’s oldest functional synthetic human program. Low-grade, non-psionic, and mass-producible, they handle construction, repair, mining, and every task too arduous for citizens. The production line never succeeded in creating stable female workers; early attempts produced severe psychological defects. Male specimens proved cheaper and more reliable.

Current Peons are deliberately undersized: sufficient muscle for labor, insufficient for combat. Earlier generations were larger and stronger. They were also responsible for documented cases of sexual assault. The Imperium reduced physical capacity in subsequent production cycles.

The Flaw

All Peon generations share a persistent defect: intense sexual fixation. Documented behaviors include stalking women, stealing/smelling undergarments, and unwanted physical contact. Peons are kept strictly separated from the general populace. Mandatory breaks every eleven hours allow them to view pornography and masturbate, officially termed “urge prevention protocols.”

The Imperium classifies this as a manufacturing defect requiring management. Internal documentation frames Peons as inherently dangerous to women.

Proximity Restrictions

Blood Swallows and Peons are never permitted in the same space. Commanders who violate this directive face penalties ranging from severe fines to execution. Official justification cites “worker safety protocols.”

The actual concern remains unspoken: two exploited Radi-Human populations, each capable of liberating the other.

The Suppressed Study

A 2288 internal study discovered something the Imperium has never publicly acknowledged.

When a woman a Peon finds attractive allows him to view and suckle her breasts for fifteen minutes, his agitation ceases entirely. If she then embraces him for eight minutes afterward, his predatory behaviors vanish permanently. During this process, Peons typically weep uncontrollably, some crying “Mama” repeatedly.

Following such contact, Peons develop normal cognitive function and emotional regulation. They also lose all conditioned submission, developing instead fierce protectiveness toward the woman involved and an intense desire for freedom.

The study’s findings were classified. Its authors do not appear in current Imperial records.

Conjurers are the Imperium’s psionic elite—children plucked from families for their innate potential, forged into weapons of immense destructive power. Their path demands total commitment: separation from blood relatives, decades of secluded training, and mastery of Eclipse and Lunar schools that reshape both battlefield and psyche.

Selection and Severance

The Imperium identifies psionic potential early. Children displaying aptitude are taken to secretive academies, their families compensated with substantial payments and elevated societal status. The exchange is framed as honor. Parents who refuse face social pressure and quiet professional consequences. Most accept. The children rarely see their birth families again.

The Long Path

Training spans fifteen to twenty years. Students learn spell theory, combat application, meditation techniques to manage Aether flow, and the mental disciplines necessary to channel Eclipse magic without fragmenting. The curriculum is grueling. Washout rates approach 40%. Those who fail become minor bureaucrats or instructors—useful, but forever marked as insufficient.

Celibacy is enforced throughout training. The academies teach that sexual energy diverts Aether from proper cultivation. Students learn to suppress desire as they suppress fear, pain, and doubt. This changes upon reaching Lord Conjurer rank.

The Lord Conjurer Privilege

Advancement to Lord Conjurer—typically achieved in one’s early thirties—unlocks the right to keep Supplicants. After decades of enforced celibacy, this privilege carries weight beyond mere status. A Lord Conjurer may maintain up to three Supplicants simultaneously, using them for Aether amplification in combat and ritual spellcasting.

The system is self-reinforcing. Young Conjurers endure years of denial knowing the reward awaits. The promise shapes behavior, ensuring compliance and ambition in equal measure.

The Female Path

Women can become Conjurers through standard academy training. Many do. However, an alternative route exists. The path is faster than academy training. Whether it’s advancement or exploitation depends on who’s telling the story…

…to serve as Supplicant to an established Lord Conjurer.

Sacred yet carnal, obscene yet essential, Supplicants are psionically-gifted individuals bound in service to Lord Conjurers within the Imperium of Dragons. The role combines practical function—Aether amplification, spell channeling, psionic support—with sexual obligations to their assigned master. While predominantly female, male Supplicants exist in smaller numbers. Only Conjurers holding the rank of Lord or higher may keep Supplicants, with the practice regulated through the Ministry of Celestial Harmony. A Lord Conjurer may keep up to three simultaneously; higher ranks permit more.

Function

In combat and ritual spellcasting, Supplicants serve as living batteries and amplifiers. A Supplicant can channel her own Aether reserves into her master’s spell, extending duration or boosting potency beyond what the Conjurer could achieve alone. More advanced techniques allow the Supplicant to act as a conduit, her body serving as a secondary focal point for complex workings. This is not without risk—Aether depletion leaves Supplicants weakened for days, and serving as a conduit for Eclipse magic can cause internal burns or psychological scarring.

Optimal Numbers

Most Lord Conjurers maintain 2 or 3 Supplicants simultaneously. This number reflects decades of institutional experience. A single Supplicant creates dependency risks—if she falls ill, depletes her Aether, or requires recovery time after intensive channeling, her master loses access to amplification entirely. 4 or more introduces complications of a different nature: competition for attention breeds resentment, scheduling intimate encounters becomes logistically fraught, and the emotional labor of managing multiple relationships while maintaining combat readiness exhausts even disciplined Conjurers. Ministry guidelines recommend two as the standard configuration, with exceptions granted only to those demonstrating capacity for larger households. Veterans of the system describe the arrangement bluntly: one to use, one to recover.

The Unarmored Conduit

For operations demanding maximum psionic output, some Lord Conjurers employ a technique considered extreme even by Imperium standards. The principle is well-documented: exposed skin conducts Aether more efficiently than covered flesh, with fabric acting as insulation that dampens energy transfer. A Supplicant bathed immediately before deployment—pores open, skin flushed, perspiration just beginning to bead—becomes a vastly more efficient conduit when stripped bare. Every drop of sweat carries Aether that would otherwise be trapped beneath silk.

The tactical mathematics are straightforward. A nude Supplicant channeling at full capacity can boost her master’s spell potency by 666% to 699% beyond what clothed amplification achieves. The costs are equally obvious: she cannot be armored, cannot easily retreat, and draws enemy attention the moment she’s spotted.

Certain Lord Conjurers have built reputations around the practice nonetheless. Their reasoning varies—some cite operational necessity, others efficiency, a few simply stop pretending the justification matters. The Ministry permits it. The Supplicants’ contracts permit it. Whether the women themselves would choose it, given genuine alternatives, remains a question the Imperium prefers not to ask.

Why Women Choose This Path

The uncomfortable truth: becoming a Supplicant represents one of the fastest paths to psionic advancement available to women in Imperium society. Sexual intercourse resulting in internal ejaculation creates conditions for Aether transfer between partners. Over time, repeated exposure can expand the recipient’s psionic capacity and even awaken latent affinities. A woman born with modest Lunar potential might develop Eclipse capabilities after years serving an Eclipse-dominant Lord Conjurer. Many of the Imperium’s most powerful female Conjurers served in this role earlier in their careers. The system perpetuates itself: women who rose through it often defend it as “the path that made them strong.”

Families also sell daughters into Supplicant contracts for status advancement or direct payment. A daughter placed with a prestigious Lord Conjurer elevates her entire household’s standing. The practice is most common among minor noble houses seeking connections to established magical lineages.

Contract Terms

Standard contracts run seven years, after which the Supplicant may negotiate renewal, transfer, or release. Released Supplicants retain whatever psionic development they gained and often leverage their enhanced abilities into independent careers—as mercenaries, as minor Conjurers in their own right, or as instructors training the next generation. Some negotiate permanent arrangements, choosing the security of an established household over independence. Others are released early if their masters lose status, die, or simply tire of them.

The Imperium frames Supplicant service as a contractual arrangement rather than ownership, though the distinction is largely semantic. However, certain protections exist: a Supplicant is legally considered part of her master’s household, granting her noble status during service. She cannot be transferred without Ministry approval. Physical abuse beyond “reasonable discipline” is grounds for contract termination. Most critically: a Lord Conjurer whose Supplicant dies or commits suicide under his care faces immediate investigation. These rules exist less from humanitarian concern than practical calculation. Supplicants represent significant investments. The Imperium protects its assets.

Outside Perception

Other factions view the Supplicant system with reactions ranging from disgust to grudging acknowledgment of its effectiveness. Alliance observers call it “slavery with extra steps.” Directorate analysts note its efficiency in developing psionic talent while criticizing its gender dynamics. The Covenant condemns it as moral corruption—though quietly studies its Aether transfer mechanisms.

Within the Imperium, Supplicants occupy an ambiguous social position: higher than servants, lower than wives, pitied by some, envied by others. Former Supplicants who achieve prominence rarely discuss their years of service. Those who do speak often describe the experience in contradictory terms—degrading yet transformative, exploitative yet opportunity-granting.

The Draconic Engine stands as a testament to the Imperium of Dragons’s unyielding pursuit of dominance. The Havok-Class Warhead Launcher on it is the most devastating artillery of any tank in the known world, it has outpaced even American technology in terms of raw firepower. Each miniaturized nuke from its cannon has the capability to reduce enemy formations to rubble. Though unparalleled in strength, the Draconic Engine is notorious for its splash damage, often resulting in friendly fire and collateral damage.

The Draconic Engine’s fission-based battery and emissions have terrible environmental implications, severely polluting the vicinity wherever it’s deployed. This has drawn particular disdain from environmentally-conscious people, who see the weapon as a symbol of the Imperium’s disregard for both human life and the planets it has control over.

The Dragonfort is less a warship than a mobile seat of Imperial authority. When the Ruby Throne dispatches a Dragonfort, it sends a fully-functioning slice of Imperium civilization: the hierarchy, the cultivation apparatus, the judgment halls, everything needed to conquer territory and govern it immediately afterward. Armed with plasma cannon arrays, antimatter missiles, railgun batteries, and the Phoenix Roost Matrix, a single Dragonfort can shatter fleets and pacify worlds.

Crew Hierarchy

Life aboard a Dragonfort mirrors Imperium society in miniature. Peons and Blood Swallows occupy windowless barracks in the lower decks—communal sleeping racks, recycled air, nutrition paste. Conditions hover at survival-minimum. Rust Crows and support staff receive functional quarters: private bunks, mess hall access, limited recreation. Adequate without comfort.

Conjurers enjoy accommodations befitting their station—private chambers with meditation spaces and access to the cultivation facilities. The Lord Conjurer commands from the Celestial Quarters at the ship’s heart: an opulent residence rivaling planetary palaces, complete with audience chambers, private gardens under artificial sun-lamps, and exclusive cultivation facilities where he and his Supplicants maintain their power.

Chamber of Ascending Dragons (昇龍閣)

Dedicated Triad Confluence facilities occupy a protected section of the ship’s interior. Here, Conjurers and their Supplicants perform regular cultivation—maintaining combat readiness during extended deployments, deepening Aether bonds, training junior Supplicants in the sacred positions. The chambers feature temperature-controlled environments, specialized furnishings, medical monitoring, and recovery suites. Access is strictly rank-controlled.

Phoenix Roost Matrix (丹穴陣)

The Dragonfort’s ultimate weapon draws from principles documented in the oldest Imperial cultivation texts. Activation requires the Lord Conjurer and his most trusted Supplicant to enter the Matrix Chamber at the ship’s core. Both disrobe completely. Wired suction cups connect to acupoints across their bodies, linking their nervous systems directly to the ship’s psionic amplification arrays.

Then they make love. The Lord Conjurer must bring his Supplicant to climax without reaching his own. Her orgasm triggers the Matrix—Aether drawn from her deepest reserves, amplified through crystalline conduits, released as a devastating psionic storm that obliterates everything in the Dragonfort’s vicinity while preserving those aboard.

The weapon’s requirements create tactical limitations no engineering can circumvent. Trust between the pair must be absolute. Typical activation takes twenty to forty minutes of sustained intimacy. Afterward, the Supplicant collapses into exhausted sleep requiring hours of recovery. The Lord Conjurer may dress and resume command immediately. Imperial tacticians consider the Phoenix Roost Matrix a weapon of last resort—its power undeniable, its cost a Lord Conjurer’s most precious asset rendered temporarily useless.

Planetary Fortress Mode

When a Dragonfort descends and anchors to a planetary surface, it transforms from warship to administrative center. Landing struts extend. Hull sections reconfigure into walls and gates. The dragon prow becomes a ceremonial entrance. Within hours, the Dragonfort establishes judgment halls, detention facilities, barracks deployment, and communication arrays linking to Imperial command. A landed Dragonfort declares Imperial sovereignty over everything within weapon range.

The Dragon Prow

Every Dragonfort features an ornate dragon head at its bow—scaled plating in crimson and gold, eyes glowing with sensor arrays, jaws housing the primary plasma batteries. The design references ancient Chinese river warships, scaled to cosmic proportions. When the Phoenix Roost Matrix fires, the psionic storm emanates from the dragon’s open maw. Survivors describe the sight as the dragon breathing—a wave of visible energy cascading outward, dissolving everything it touches. The image is deliberate. The Imperium wants its enemies to see a dragon descending from heaven to devour them.