The Empire of Light has stood for over three thousand years. It has seen good times and bad, but it has always prevailed. In the early years, its success was put down to magic and immortal gods called Shen. In later years, its incredible grasp of high technology saw it through darkness and chaos.
Yet at the core of it all, the secrets of the Empires' power came from one very simple concept. Always, for the Light there was the Darkness. For the hard, the soft. For the strong, the yielding. For the male, the female. Yang and Yin. A philosophy of balance. The Emperor of Light was always protected by the Assassin in the Darkness. Usually siblings, the Emperor and the Assassin protected their realm from threats both mortal and immortal. Even when technology ruled, the people still remembered the old ways. Though philosophers and holymen all created their books and lists of how the universe worked, everything was accepted and somehow meshed.
That is until he came. During the reign of Iron Rose, the first Empress of Light in a thousand years, the foreigner arrived. He defeated the Empress' young brother, the Assassin in the Darkness, Left Hand of the Empress, in single combat, and took his position. From there, it developed. For the first time in a thousand years, the Empire was ruled by an Empress. There were those who feared that her Yin form was too strong for her apparently Yang nature, and were worried that it would bring ruin to the Empire. It was, after all, the Empire of Light, ruled by Yang, controlled through Yin. For it to be any other way would be simply wrong.
The foreigner, the interloper, won first the Empress' body and then her heart through his strange ways. No-one could deny his martial abilities. His Art was strong enough to defeat the Assassin in the Darkness, after all, but he too was Yang. Despite his flamboyant persona, however, he was appointed the Assassin in the Darkness. Many feel that this was the first step on steep, slippery slope that was bringing ruin to the Empire of the Light. For centuries, the bureaucrats had organised everything, keeping everything in its place in the light, while the ancient triumvirate crime family worked to control operations in the darkness. The foreigner's influence worked to change that, bringing the power back towards the light, and while he worked there was little the three Masters - Steel Phoenix, the Master of Hands, Agate Lily, the Master of Blades, and Howling Wind, the Master of Minds - could do to stop it.
Worse, things started to go wrong across the Empire. Several long-running scientific projects failed inexplicably, often catastrophically, until under the foreigners' influence the Empress put a stop to the research. Harvests failed, and the Empress detailed the bureaucracy to aid those who had failed to aid themselves. Humanitarian action spread rampantly across the Empire until they felt certain that they were beginning to appear so weak that the barbarians beyond the borders would see it as an opportunity to attack. No-one who mattered realised that the non people who worked on the land and in who served them were becoming happier and more motivated. It didn't matter to them. All they saw was that the Empire was weakening. Then worse happened. The Empress bore the foreigners' twins, and while neither child bore his name in any part, it was clear that as the young imperial prince Rising Dragon grew older, he was falling deeply into his fathers' influence. The sister was trained by her uncle, but she had much of her mothers' Yang in her and many feared that Setting Sun would be inappropriate for the role of Assassin in the Darkness.
Eventually, the inevitable happened. Iron Rose was killed in a 'tragic accident' that claimed both her life and her consorts'. Rising Dragon, age ten, rose to the throne and became Emperor of Light. His twin sister became the Assassin in the Darkness. She knew how her ancient role should work. Yes, she was his enforcer, his lethal deterrent, but she was also his advisor, the Yin to his Yang, the devils' advocate. Yet she found that he was disinclined to listen to her, never taking her advice unless he could see the benefit to all. She became little more than a figurehead, an embarrassment to be sold to a lord as part of an alliance contract. And eventually, the time came. Rising Dragon found an appropriate match for his sister… who promptly disappeared. Mere months later, the first attempt on his life came from a small group. No-one knew how they got into the palace, but they fled after one of their number was slain by the Emperor's mechanical guardians inside his very throne room. Now, its' only a matter of time until something else occurs, and the Shen only know how it will pan out from here…
The Empire of Light is loosely based off ancient China with a futuristic bent. Cybernetics and information technology are rife, highly kinetic martial arts battles intermingled with robot exterminators and plasma weaponry. At the same time, there is the mystery of the Shen and the ancient magics to contend with, for even in the technologically enlightened Empire, there is something unusual lurking beneath the surface…
