The power of the ☵ Water Sanctum skips the eldest setting off a chain of consequences.
Summary
Event: Zudaeshi’s Mother is skipped by the Sanctum magic when it comes time to choose a new Sanctum Master for the ☵ Water Sanctum
Mechanism: The Sanctum chooses its Master through a sacred, semi-sentient magical process no one fully controls
Expectation: Zudaeshi’s Mother, the eldest heir, was assumed to inherit
Outcome: The magic instead chooses Mulsae’s Grandfather
Speculation: The Water Sanctum rejected her for failing to embody its essential duality — life and death, stillness and motion, creation and destruction. She leaned too far into cruelty, unable to honor the sustaining side of Water
Consequences
1. Zudaeshi’s Mother defects to Shinra
Believes the Sanctum betrayed her
Marries into Shinra’s military caste
Raises Zudaeshi in a culture of conquest and slavery
Seeds intergenerational resentment
2. Shinra - ☶ Mountain Sanctum alliance
Her old allies (Garrick’s family) reestablish contact (Zudaeshi’s Mother and Garrick’s Father? Grandfather? Were lovers. But it's taboo to cross sanctum bloodlines)
They want to repair her legacy by merging bloodlines. Reject the taboo, make a powerful merged Sanctum.
Garrick and Zudaeshi are betrothed. Their union is meant to politically and magically realign their lines
3. Plot to reclaim the ☵ Water Sanctum
Hope: the Sanctum will switch to Zudaeshi’s bloodline
Secondary Consequences
Childhood friends; conflicted loyalty
Kairo tells his father, hoping for diplomacy
2. Mulsae's Father attacks first
3. Garrick retaliates
Joins Garrick’s Father in wiping out Mulsae’s family
Mulsae and Mulsae's Father survive
4. Final Duel of the Sanctum Masters
The two patriarchs clash
Mulsae and Garrick don’t fight until Mulsae's Father is mortally wounded
Together, Mulsae and his Mulsae's Father kill Garrick’s Father
Mulsae's Father dies in Mulsae’s arms
Tertiary Consequences
Their friendship is shattered by mutual blame and guilt
Mulsae becomes more emotionally detached
Ongoing Ripple Effects
The war with Shinra is fueled by a feud whose origin no one living fully understands