Path of High Purpose
High Purpose in the Golden Age
The Path of High Purpose is a movement which can trace its origins to the Shogunate, but whose roots likely stretch back to even more ancient times. During the Golden Age, the buildup towards the Usurpation of the Solar Exalted saw a number of different forms of dissent. Amongst a number of mortal and Dragonblooded officers in the armies of the Deliberative emerged the concept of the righteous soldier, that it was not divinities in Heaven nor Exalts and bureaucrats in Meru who understood how to safeguard and govern Creation… they were too separate from the true struggles on the ground, military struggles alongside the troops thought to build empathy for Creation’s inhabitants and direct efficiency of action without the fluff and corruption of politics. The origins of such thinking were likely with the Solar Exalted themselves, militant Dawn castes such as Scourge of Woe seeking to secure powerbases in their political maneuvers against their rivals, but through natural evolution or the manipulation from the Sidereal Exalted these were turned slowly counter to those who initiated them, assisted in no small part by the increasing difficulties seen under Solar rule.
High Purpose in the Shogunal Age
Due to its birth in war, the Dragonblooded Shogunate saw military officers play a major part in shaping its early institutions, but as its centuries wore on some believed that increasing flaws in Shogunal institutions were due to their corruption by overly-bureaucratic leadership and political intrigue. Officers in the armies of the Shogun and the daimyo, mostly originating outside the major Gens or from those that had fallen from power, came together to term themselves the ishin shishi, Those of High Purpose, their aim to plan an overthrow of the Shogunal court and daimyo to establish a ‘tent government’, an officer or cabal of officers taking the Shogunal title and appointed to administrative tasks through the framework of military units, their discipline and martial understanding cutting through corruption and political distraction.
Ishin Shishi conspiracies were an issue for many daimyo, and even the Shogun, in the last years of the Shogunate, tending to arise in areas where leaders were seen as weak or military reversals had been suffered. While sometimes such coups could stabilize situations for a time, they often fell into internecine fighting (as seen in Chiaroscuro following the Battle of the Broken Smile). Chumyo Nefvarin of the Seventh Legion of the Shogun was a loyalist appointed to his post to root out ishin shishi sympathies within the officers corps, a task still ongoing when the Legion was struck by the Great Contagion and then ordered to hold against the Fair Folk. The shape taken by Lookshy in the years that have followed show that the purge within the Seventh was either ineffective or quickly reversed.
High Purpose in the Scarlet Era
Under the Scarlet Empress, the remnant military institutions and cliques of the Shogunate were largely dismantled, both directly and through clandestine means. However, the Empress encouraged amongst the Legions a sentiment perhaps drawn from ishin shishi principles, to have the soldiers of the Legions consider themselves the Empress’ true servants (in contrast to the corrupt ministers and Black Helms), and to have the outcaste officers consider themselves the skilled leaders suffering under the effete incompetence of Dynastic superiors or comrades.
When the Great Houses took control of the Imperial Legions in the wake of the Empress’ disappearance, their aim was not only to secure themselves military power and expanded arsenals but to cut out the threat of would-be-Shoguns amongst the strategoi. The maneuver was less effective in identifying and purging blooming ishin shishi sentiments amongst the junior officers, whose growth has only been encouraged by the dismantling of Legion strength and flagrant Dynastic corruption in the time of the Empty Throne. Even amongst some Dynastic Legion officers the appeal of the High Purpose is being felt, scions of House Tepet particularly vulnerable to such feelings given its fall from Dynastic power following the War with the Bull.
Purges and reprisals against officers suspected by Dynastic overseers of ishin shishi sympathies are ongoing within the ranks of most Imperial Legions.
