Aru'u Arwoyiya: Daughter of Harmony

Summary

Within a single lifespan, seven nobles lay dead, one for each of the Seven Truths. All in their prime. Each expected to become a great leader in his own right. None bore the mark of any wound. This, to many, was prophecy fulfilled. The legends of Harmony were true, and she had come to exact righteous judgment upon the wicked among the wealthy. Let the Harmony Hunters fear, for they would soon be next! The nobles slaughtered were tyrants, all of them. One fired his entire staff to his personal vices in privacy. His lifeless body was hung exposed to the public. One brought a charity to court, just so she could share in the donations that passed through it. Her body was laid at the doorstep of the charity from which she stole. A third hired all the eligible women from an entire village for his own pleasure, robbing the town of a generation and dooming the village to a slow death. The shrieks of the women were heard from every corner of the capital city. No reparations. Only destitution.

Historical Basis

While at first there were no apparent signs of mortal wounds, the autopsies made by the local government found traces of poison, concealed stab wounds, and many other intelligently-made fatal blows. In fact, the killer made very sloppy mistakes in her last few murders. Most believe the killer to be female now due to analysis of the accidental few strands of hair left behind at the scene of the crime. In fact, she left so much evidence that the Hunters who infiltrated the investigation were able to determine the precise city and town of her origin. See, because the Ugo-yt and Keyrit were still bitter rivals, there were very few Ugo-yt migrants to the region, and nearly all of them were vetted and fully registered with the government. The murderer's accidental traces, however, pointed to a region that was notorious for its Harmony cult, and from which the Keyrit authorities had banned migration as a result. The clues had been gathered; it was time for the Hunters to investigate. As for the characters of the nobles, with sparingly few exceptions, most of them were very charitable. Most stories were heavily exaggerated, and every noble death caused suffering rather than the supposedly intended consolation. A few of the nobles maintained nonprofits themselves, and the charity support and management died with them.

Spread

While the Keyrit Empire could by no means conduct business in Ugo-yt sovereign territory, Hunter influence crossed national boundaries, and messages were soon sent to the Ugo-yt branch to pick up where their Keyrit comrades left off. They began a covert operation within the cult, treading the fine line between blending in with the crowd and getting sucked into fanatic dogma. Ultimately, however, after leaking as much information as they needed, they found new leads that brought them to the vast desert regions of Yukur. It took a very long time to track down each and every wandering tribe there; they even found in their search tribes that had not yet met the rest of civilization. Through translators, descriptions of the perpetrator based on the gathered evidence, and numerous bribes, they managed to find two stories of the woman. One stated that she fled deep into Unterritory, which would have ended the search. Unterritory was too vast and complex to leave behind many traces; if she had wanted to get lost there, she could. The other story moved her to the urban jungles of Welkwu. And so the Harmony Hunters traveled deep into the slums of Welkwu. There the traces ended. Only there did the Harmony Hunters realize their mistake. By asking around for the description for the killer, by telling them what she had done, they had unwittingly spread her myth, and brought the ideology of her cult with her. They had evangelized better than one woman ever could, even to the farthest, the unknown reaches of the world. Wherever they went, sects began to sprout up, leading to many, many more problems for the Hunters. It is considered to this day to be the worst blunder of the Harmony Hunters to date.

Variations & Mutation

The region of each sect had its own rich-versus-poor troubles, be they over land, over food rights, or over work occupations. The nobles who were murdered adopted the traits that concerned the local populace the most, making them more archetypal villains. Oddly enough, because the Harmony Hunters collected information as they progressed, and because the cultures that the Hunters reached first were more fanatic in their beliefs, the story generally became closer to the truth as it spread further from the source of the crimes.

Cultural Reception

This was a great affront to Keyrit philosophy, as the sects that arose stood in direct contrast to their personal beliefs. However, societal reaction surpassed what was necessary for governmental discipline, and the story soon faded from public memory. Welkwu, whose poor had thrived from their industrial revolution, regarded the legend as a news story rather than as a myth of hope. Yukur and small sects of Ugo-yt, however, took to the story with open arms. It became wonderful propaganda against their southern rivals.

Date of Setting

2729

Related Ethnicities