Ghosts of the Eastern Hinterland

CW: medical brain injury. In the White City, the military pragmatists keep robust records of troop numbers and movements, materiel requirements, leadership postings, and areas of active instability inside the empire. Their strange methods are useful culturally, but also logistically: they are capable of processing and interpreting vast amounts of data, and using it to generate predictions, models, and other indispensable planning documents.Within the pragmatist clades are a secretive few called the Eastern Group, who take as their specialist interest the far-distant eastern borders of the empire. The citizens understand that their territories are vast, but finite - that the endless plains of conquered city-states and peoples does eventually end at the far end of the world. It is known that the eastern borders are the shores of a strange sea. The work of the Eastern Group is mostly concerned with how the empire might extend its capacity for force projection across this sea - they are…