The Bastille
The Bastille is an action-filled play by the Dynastic playwright Cynis Bei. Some elements of the play, including its setting and parts of the plot, are thought by some critics to be drawn from Bei’s own experiences with imprisonment after his arrest for writing the play ‘Final Battle’.
Plot
The Bastille is set in the Bastille of Thirty Faces, a fortress of the Imperial Legions in the Scarlet Prefecture where the Imperial Magistrates house prisoners until the Scarlet Empress can pass judgment upon them. It is thought to be impregnable and inescapable.
A Winglord of an Imperial Legion, garrisoned nearby, plots a betrayal against the Scarlet Empress. With an elite team of well-equipped duelist troops, he seizes control of the Bastille and its armoury, threatening to turn essence cannons and lightning ballistae against the Imperial City unless the Empress gives him all the jade contained within the vaults of the Imperial Treasury. Though loyal Legions quickly surround the Bastille, they cannot attack and take the fortress without leaving time for the Imperial City to be destroyed during the effort. The Scarlet Empress herself issues a decree to her forces that, while she could wipe the rebels from the face of Creation in an instant, she is fond of the Bastille and would like to avoid obliterating it.
A plan is hatched where a group of Legion troops will infiltrate the prison, assisted by a Dynastic sorcerer and led by an agent of the All-Seeing Eye, forced to reveal his identity to participate, who had once been held at, and almost escaped from, the Bastille. They will enter, disable the weapons and assassinate the traitor Winglord.
Their effort is nearly foiled as soon as they have entered the Bastille, when the Legion officers attempt to convince the rebel duelists to surrender and return to Imperial service. Declaring that nothing matters to them but ‘themselves and jade coins’, the duelists attack, and the outnumbered Legion troops are killed in the battle, along with many duelists, though the sorcerer and the Eye agent escape unseen by the surviving duelists, moving through the Bastille and disabling weapons until at last captured by the duelists with several weapons still operational. With their infiltration team stopped, the Legion strategoi outside order their troops to launch an attack in a desperate effort to stop the rebels.
While captured, the Eye agent uses his knowledge to free himself and the sorcerer from their cells, sneaking up to overhear the surviving rebels. Now under attack and forced to act on their threat, the Winglord regrets what he has done, throwing off his armour and saying he will surrender and accept blame as a true soldier of the Realm. Some side with him, also removing their armour, but others refuse, attacking and killing those who have had the change of heart, before beginning to fire their remaining weapons at the Imperial City. The Eye agent and the sorcerer attack to stop them, and with blasts of essence flying all about manage to slay them, though they are injured. The Eye agent tells the sorcerer he must return to his duties now and fades into the darkness… when Legion troops reach the disabled weapons, the sorcerer tells them that the agent was killed in the fighting.
Production
The Bastille is a difficult play to perform for a number of reasons, including large amounts of fire and essence effects to simulate its combats, as well as the need for show armour that is light enough for actors to bear as they move onstage, but which must break the usual stylized mould seen in Dynastic theatre to make a clear distinction between the magitechnology of the duelists and the jade artifice of the Legion troops.
While the script is not filled with long soliloquies or arias, it is noted for the quick banter between characters, the pace of which can be difficult for classical actors to perform well, and additional difficulty comes due to the complete absence of names for any of the characters in the play.
Reception
Dynastic critics did not think much of the Bastille, accusing it of being devoid of poetry or complexity in its writing, all flash and no substance. The Bastille was, however, well received amongst the Legion troops, commoners, and low patricians who were likely its target audience… while the play shows traitors within the Legions, it fits squarely into stereotypes held by the troops about their own duelist fangs, and so was very well received (outside those fangs). House Cathak, House Sesus, and House Nellens have all sponsored subsequent performances.
The ability of an essence cannon to hit the Imperial City from the Bastille of Thirty Faces is not just suspect but utterly nonexistent. Nevertheless, “The danger of rebellious elements, in the absence of our beloved Scarlet Empress, looting Her Treasury with the cannons of the Bastille” was amongst the reasons listed in the Deliberative motion which transferred control of the Legions from the Thousand Scales to the Great Houses.
