While the city of Khezvaros has always assessed taxes and fees on goods entering or leaving through the city docks, the piers of the fisherfolk--which were constructed and for generations have been maintained by the fisherfolk themselves--were considered outside of the city's sphere of influence. Likewise, commerce that occurred at the shoreside fish market was considered beyond the city's jurisdiction. The Fishmonger Rebellion erupted when a new imperial governor attempted to institute a tax that violated this long-standing, if informal, arrangement.
The Conflict
Prelude
The festival of the Empress in the year 888 began with the innauguration of a new Khephale . Like her predecessors and every Khephale after her until the appointment of Hursit Ozanzada , the newly-crowned Imperial Governess Parisa Hoxha was drawn from the upper ranks of The Imperial Legions and had an impressive enough war record that her reputation alone was likely to deter would-be revolutionaries. As was traditional, Hoxha addressed the citizenry on the last day of the festival to announce her plans for the city. Her speech mostly consisted of the usual jingoisms and vagaries for which politicians are well known, but one item on her agenda proposed to upend centuries of Khezvaran tradition: a tax on vendors at the Harbor Gate Fish Market.
Although the fishmongers were given the entire month Savakoy as a grace period, with the tax set to begin on 1 Sulezamon, they indicated their displeasure with Hoxha's plans within a week of their announcement. Throughout the city, imperial buildings and the homes and businesses of imperials and those considered imperial sympathizers were inundated with the unmistakable smell of rotting sea life. An investigation would usually turn up a one or more fish suspended from a string inside a chimney, floating in a water cistern, or wedged beneath the eaves. As the long, hot month wore on, the horrific smell and the fish that caused it returned. With each iteration, the fish became harder and harder to locate, especially in the homes of tax collectors and others closely associated with the Empire's greed. Buildings were turned upside down, house guards were doubled, servants were accused and punished, and many imperials became so inundated with the odor that no amount of fine perfume could keep them from smelling like a common fishwife. Those with little love for the Empire found the whole affair quite entertaining.
Governess Hoxha, who was safely protected from the stench of seafood in the Imperial Palace, considered the whole incident with the fish to be little more than a face-saving performance of protest and assumed that a token show of imperial force would be enough to elicit compliance from the fisherfolk. On the fist day that the tax was slated to be collected, she ordered two squads or legionnaires to accompany the tax collectors to the fish market, along with Bozak Mazhari, Bashi of the Treasury and a priest and descendant of Mazhar, Lord of Coin.
By the time the tax collectors passed through Harbor Gate just after midday, the fish market was packed. As the imperials approach, the anti-imperial chants that arose made it clear that the crowd was not there for commerce. The sheer size of the crowd made it difficult for the legionnaires watching from harborgate to track the movement of their brothers among the rabble, but the occasional glint of sunlight of a legion breastplate along with the absence of sounds of battle above the chanting rabble assured them that the tax collectors and their guard were stoically administering their duties despite the abuse. As the crowd began to disperse, the soldiers of the harborgate garrison waited for the imperial party to break free of the clutter of the market on their way back to the city. When they didn't appear, the gate guards sent a messenger to the Imperial Palace and nearly half their number in the direction of the market.
By the time the legionnaires reached the market, it was empty except for empty stalls, abandoned fish, and the bodies of six legionnaires and a tax collector. The soldiers did manage to capture seven stragglers who had fled the market at their approach, but if these prisoners knew anything they weren't talking. As reinforcements began to arrive, the imperial soldiers began to fan out beyond the gates searching for the missing tax collectors and what remained of their guard force.
It didn't take them long to figure out where the kidnappers were. The old temple of
Nuvizi was then undergoing renovations that would transform it into the
Port Authority & Customs House and as the imperial soldiers approached they saw that the archways into the courtyard of the old temple were now blocked with large stones that had been brought in for the construction. In taking the building, it was likely that the fishmongers had acquired even more imperial hostages, chief among them
Libo Kolar, celebrated architect and a descendant of
The Purple Sage. With dusk just a few hours away and the full details of the situation still highly speculative, the legions were ordered to fortify a perimeter around the ancient temple and avoid engagement unless someone tried to leave. Additional reinforcements arrived throughout the night and by morning nearly a thousand legionnaires were encamped in Dock Ward.
The expanded Imperial Docks, like the Port Authority, were still under construction at the time of the rebellion and there were old men alive then who could believably brag that they had ventured into--or even been a regular visitor to--
Pirate's Wood. Although the forest and its criminal element had been cleared out, there were only a handful of buildings north of the temple, allowing the legions to fully surround the building. Harbor Gate was closed to non-legion traffic, crews of ships docked in the harbor were ordered to remain on their boats, and a line of soldiers stretched from the wall to the coast to block entry via the strip of land that lay outside the coastal wall.
Despite controlling the territory, the imperials had no good way of taking the tower. The large blocks of stone that barred entry to the building would be difficult and time-consuming to attempt to break through (especially in the summer heat) and potentially expose those doing the work to attacks from above. The imperial engineers also agreed that if they were in the fishmongers' place, they would use the construction cranes on site for the rebuilding project to stack additional blocks of stone behind or on top of the ones that were visible. Attempting to enter the building through the windows on the upper floors would likely result in heavy losses while also neutralizing the legion's numerical advantage. Even if the empire found a way to storming the building, it was unlikely they could take the temple before the fishmongers could kill the hostages. With two prominent godborn among the prisoners, the risk was too high. That left the empire with two options: diplomacy or siege.
Hoping to avoid the embarrassment of an extended siege against a bunch of fisherfolk entrenched in the empire's own structure, the ranking legion commander, Khilarch Bairum Rostgar signaled the empire's willingness to negotiate. Not long after, the shutters of a second-story window opened, revealing Libo Kolar, who relayed his captor's demand to negotiate directly with the Khephale. The Khilarch agreed to send the request to the palace and tried to keep the fishmongers talking, but they withdrew back into the temple. Catapults and other siege weapons arrived later in the day, but both sides knew the imperials wouldn't risk using them as long as the two godborn hostages drew breath. If the Imperial Governess responded to the rebels' request before night fell, the Khilarch chose to keep the answer to himself.
The next day Rostgar--once again with the architect as a go-between--informed the fishmongers that the Khephale had chosen not to meet with them, but had provided the Khilarch with parameters within which he could act as her proxy. When the rebels failed to agree to the terms, Rostgar's men hauled out the seven prisoners captured near the market and he presented the fishmongers with an ultimatum: unless they agreed to parlay by one hour before dusk, the prisoners would be executed. There was a risk that the execution would backfire, causing the fishmongers to kill the Kolar and Mazhari in retribution, but the imperials trusted that the fishmongers would not be stupid enough to destroy their only real bargaining chips. With only the hasty construction of a gallows to break up the monotony, the hours until dusk passed slowly. When the rebels failed to make any sign of willingness to negotiate, the prisoners were executed. The act did not illicit any immediate response, so the imperials settled into another uneasy night with the watch doubled in case the fishmongers responded under cover of darkness.
On the third day of Sulezamon, the sun rose to reveal seven corpses scattered at the foot of the temple walls nearest to Rostgar's command tent. The legionnaires met no resistance when they approached to retrieve the bodies, who were quickly identified as four legionnaires, a tax collector, and two men from Libo Kolar's work crew. A few hours later, the rain of fish began. It started above the imperial lines surrounding the temple, but by the end of they day fish were steadily falling from the sky all over Imperial and Arena wards. Native areas of Khezvaros (along with Foreign Ward and the Horse Lord Enclave) remained untouched by the sushi storm.
The rain of fish continued for the next three days and nights, causing a handful of deaths and uncounted injuries. Fear of being hit by falling sea life forced the imperials to shelter in their homes, which thanks to the hot summer sun reeked of fish guts. On the 6th of Sulezamon, with fish still falling from the sky, Hoxha sent word that she would come to the tower to negotiate a truce with the fishmongers. By the time her entourage was ready to leave the temple, the rain of fish had stopped. With Libo Kolar once again speaking on behalf of the fishmongers from a second-story window, the two sides were able to arrive at mutually-agreeable terms by nightfall.
The next morning the bulk of the legion forces returned to the city, leaving only Khilarch Rostgar and his personal bodyguard to receive the imperial prisoners once they were released. Shortly thereafter, a small fleet of fishing boats arrived to ferry the rebels back home.
While the hostages were able to identify some of the fishmonger conspirators with a reasonable degree of certainty, they could not provide the empire with the identities of the leaders. The prisoners had been isolated during the siege, and it was obvious to Libo Kolar that the people who fed him lines to repeat to the imperials during negotiations were mere go-between who frequently sent people out of the room to relay information to and from whoever was calling the shots. A handful of the suspected rebels were arrested for unrelated violations, encountered bureaucratic hurdles to their activities, or met with unfortunate accidents, but not in sufficient numbers for any but the most credulous to suspect imperial conspiracy.
Aside from the identities of the rebel leaders, the imperials were keen to learn the identity of the wizard responsible for the fishfalls. When Hoxha inquired about the source of the fish during negotiations, she was told that the fishmongers had caused fish to fall from the skies by using
Wind cords to scoop the creatures up from the ocean and deposit them in the imperial parts of the city. Nobody believe this explanation, mainly because wind cords have never been known to operate with that kind of precision. The empire was sure that a wizard was working on behalf of the fishmongers--they suspected
Ilka the Faceless--but were never able to find evidence to back up their theory.
Under the terms of agreement between the empire and the fishmongers, the tax on the fish market was repealed and Hoxha was forced to issue a decree that basically formalized the long-standing custom: the Empire could continue to tax traffic through the imperial docks, but otherwise would no longer attempt to levy taxes or fees on commerce that took place outside the city walls. This edict led to the construction of storage houses on nearly every available inch of land between the city walls and the docks, as well as several trading houses and storage facilities outside the gates along most other routes into the city. Merchants who were confident they could sell their cargos without passing through the city gates often unloaded their ships some distance from the city and hauled it by cart to these facilities to avoid the imperial dock tax.
While not granting
Stinktown full status as a ward, the agreement also stipulated that the next allocation of
Protectorate Assembly seats would include representation of the people who lived outside the city walls.
Historical Significance
While not going so far as to deny that the Fishmonger Rebellion ever happened, the imperials have downplayed the incident, except perhaps as an object lesson about issuing edicts that overturn long-standing native traditions. The people of East Ridge and those with anti-imperial sentiments have done just the opposite, rarely passing up a chance to recount the empire's defeat at the hands of lowly peasants whose primary weapon was several boatloads of falling fish.
When everything returned to normal, the fisherfolk who could afford to do so donated 1 copper per week to the families of each of the men executed by the imperials. Once the families were back on their feet (since fisherfolk, unlike imperials, are not content to live off the earnings of others), this charity was continued to other neighbors in need. Today, being successful enough to regularly give "7 coppers in memory of the martyrs" to those in need is considered a mark of status. Not making such a donation when it's within your means is believed to bring bad luck.
Khephale Hoxha was cowed by the incident and is remembered as a timid and ineffectual ruler, when she's remembered at all. The remainder of her reign was brief and unnoteworthy.
The fishmonger's rebellion generated a wealth of songs and poems and the tale remains a staple of storytellers when entertaining audiences with little love for the empire. Most literature consists of comic retellings of the story, and especially the imperials' troubles in dealing with the fish that were first hidden in their homes and then fell from the sky. There are, however, a number of dirges and ballads celebrating the sacrifice of the seven martyrs executed by the empire. While the imperials maintain that these men were involved in the rebellion, the fisherfolk paint them unfortunate innocents who were unjustly murdered by the empire.
In addition to the literary tradition, the architectural embellishments of the Port Authority building feature a recurring motiff of seven fish suspended from rope, as if strung up to be cleaned. This design is believed to be a reference to the seven hanged men, but Libo Kolar's reason for including a reminder of his captivity in the building's design is a mystery.
Not long after the rebellion, a building crane and several large blocks of stone appeared just inside the gates of the Imperial Palace and remained there until Governess Hoxha's successor took power. Most people assumed that the Khephale had taken note of the fishmonger's fortification tactics and was prepared to mimic them in the event of an assault on the palace. While similar fortification tactics have reportedly been used on a few occasions, the practice of blocking doors with giant stones never became widespread.
Comments