#also yeah this is mostly covered in the ktb field guide but the latter half is a lot of recontextualization

[radiofreesanjak]

I have recently found myself speaking again to once-nobles and remembering interesting differences between us and our Karrakin neighbors, so in the interest of cultural exchange let me tell you this: On Sanjak we tell the story of Passacaglia differently. 

To those who grew up on the story as told by the ones who would make a great hero of the man, you'll recognize most of it, but I'd ask you to pay attention to the details of the story, and consider what we Sanjak see in it.

Once there was a man who lived in the shadow of a ruler. Like us, he was born ignoble, and like we once were, he was pledged to labor in that ruler's fields. He and his family would toil, day in and out, and produce great quantities of food that would be tithed to the man that owned his land and his pledge. One day he would unify the people and rule under the name Passacaglia, but before he was just a man who turned soil to wheat in the shadow of the great city Reis. 

But Reis was troubled: there were raiders at the borders, both the desperate and the spiteful, those left hungry by the tyrants in power and those sent by those same tyrants to bite at the heels of the one Passacaglia was pledged to. 

In those times, as now, it was common for those in power to look upon those below them and see them as things to be used. So too did Pasha Reis, the ruler of Reis, who looked upon Passacaglia's family and saw naught but serfs who could be traded for continued safety from the raiders who plagued his borders. A deal was struck: Passacaglia's family may be made fallow so that the peace can remain. 

The peace brought the deaths of twelve of his brothers over twelve years of fighting, as the tithe Passacaglia's family paid the nearby Pasha was repaid in silence. Bearing the grief of his brothers and the rage of his mothers, Passacaglia begged Pasha Reis for aid. He was refused. Another brother died. Passacaglia begged again, on both knees. He was refused. Another brother died. A third time, he groveled and cried for aid. He was refused. Another brother died.

Left then with nothing else to do, Passacaglia and his last remaining brother, Anaxandron, looked to the people of their commune and the great city they bordered, and then back to the lord who had left them for dead, and came up with a plan: Passacaglia would deny the tithe and take to the city to seek their aid, and Anaxandron would spread word of the dereliction of the Pasha from his duty. And so Passacaglia left for ancient Karrakis. 

He returned with a great many soldiers and a great many weapons to find the people of Reis turn coat to join under his banner. Anaxandron, who spoke of the cruelty and betrayal of the Pasha, had swayed the people of Reis, who had come to find that the true enemy is not the one outside their gates but the one above them. 

Stood by the throne of Reis, Passacaglia looked out. He saw the nature of the world around him as the Pasha once did. Reis is but a fragment of the whole world, its injustices a mirror to the injustices made manifest in Laurent, and Cosimo, and Dellamar. Across the surface of Karrakis, other families were made fallow, other brothers killed. His anger, once abated after the death of Pasha Reis, was ignited by the firebrand once again, and he pointed the people of Reis at the thrones of Laurent and Reis and Cosimo. Ahead of them, the words of Anaxandron, that those in power stayed in that place only for betrayal and violence, spread. The other great city-states of the melee fell as Reis did.

At the end of it all, Passacaglia stood in the ancient city Karrakis and looked upon the known world. He saw the people liberated, and saw the banner that they waved. He had been the tip of that spear, and he knew himself to be just, felt the Firebrand at one hand and the Titan at the other. Passacaglia looked up once again, to a higher throne even than Pasha Reis ever held, empty. The old rulers failed, he thought, but they did so because they had to compromise to the powers around them. Reis was threatened by Cosimo and so had to cede lives to maintain the peace. But Passacaglia thought that would have to bow to no one: he thought could bring justice and prosperity by his hand alone.  So the wheel turned: a tyrant replaced with a kinder tyrant. A revolution betrayed by the allure of power. One kind of oppression replaced by another.

We tell this story to our children as a lesson on the nature of change. It is not enough to rid the world of a tyrant only to replace them with a better one. The reign of Passacaglia and his progeny produced the reign of Tyrannus, which produced the system we fought so hard to overthrow. Only when the revolution seeks liberation for the people and not the elevation of a better tyrant can it end the cycle of violence that we live within. 

My mentor Ozia used to call him the Fool's revolutionary, but I think that pays too much disrespect to the Fool. Of all the Passions, the Fool teaches us humility, that we may look upon ourselves and see ourselves as fallible and capable of erring. Passacaglia learned no such lesson. In this way, he lives in the hearts of the nobility now: they do not see the error of putting power in the hands of a virtuous few. 

Consider this lesson carefully. When he stepped on the road to war, Passacaglia was told that the empire he would build would make monuments to his mothers and brothers from the ashes of other mothers and other brothers, and he would trade the families of others for the comfortable peace of empire. He chose to ascend to the throne regardless. Here I warn you now: this is the nature of all empire, and all revolutions like Passacaglia's. 

-Mistral