It had begun over a game of dice, the sort of idle conversation that men whiled away the hours of the night with when in the company of comrades. Soldiers of China, or so they were called, set to guard the valuable iron mines in Liaoshan and the city herself. Sons of local dignitaries, bureaucrats' second children spared from the bloodbath in the south, they were both entitled, trained for war, and bored - a dangerous combination. The demands on the miners in the great pits near the northern settlement had only been increased with the need to replace what was lost in the progresses of the empire that had wrung out the Chinese purse, and this wealth had put curious notions in the heads of the guards of the city.
In particular, their commander, Long Ten.
A veteran of the initial wars of expansion, when Aaron's army of halberd-armed soldiers began subjugating nearby farming villages, he had been retired north to Liaoshan with a minimal pension after taking a scythe in the side, relegated to a garrison command. After marrying a local woman, his years had mostly been spent in the slow but perilous game of the politician of China, balancing the demands of the bureaucrats over the ire of the families and clans he represented, currying favor and doing his best to tamp down on simmering rage. Perhaps some of the villages of China were content - not so in Liaoshan. Many clans had lost sons to the wars of expansion, seen neighbors cast into the mining pits for refusing to submit to the rule of the southerners, and seen little wealth and power come north for their valued iron ore. Without Liaoshan, it was said, one in every three forges of China would fall silent.
And yet the southerners did not give them their due, distributing the plunder of the Yangtze according to designs of the Pale Tyrant, esoteric and irrational to the minds of many.
So the conversation had begun in the barracks, idle, considering. Liaoshan was great, and yet none respected her for her worth. She could be greater still without the southern parasites taking the best ores, the strongest sons, the finest tools, and returning but a pittance to the queen of the north. What if the city walked her own way? What if her soldiers received the most fair of arms and armor first, before the leeches of Aaron and his court?
A better China would rise, a stronger China. This thinking was infectious, and passed from clan to clan within the city, hushed whispers yes, but glory burning in the hearts of those who saw a future for Liaoshan. A few bureaucrats were disposed of by the guard, men from southern cities who might have ridden south to warn the Tyrant. Mining accidents. Falls from horses. And the plan still took shape.
Then one day the shipments of ore from Liaoshan simply stopped. Men were brought up out of the pits, sons and fathers that had been in the darkness for too long, their arms strong from heavy labor given weapons to wield. The guard struck the colors of the False China, and raised the deep green banner of Liaoshan above the city, a rearing golden dragon decorating the forest field. When the collectors and assessors came to take the tithe from the city, as was their custom, they were run off back south empty handed, with demands for payments of gold, of silver, of fine furs and gems if they wished the wealth of the north to be theirs again. No few hamlets nearby, weary of the endless taking and grasping of the southerners, aligned themselves with fair Liaoshan, the Queen of the North. With her iron, and her guards, and her battle-hardened rebels now freed to fight against the regime they despised, China would no longer submit to the whims of a foreign devil.