Excerpt from the Heretical Evangle of Teo:
In those days of lotus and citrus, years after the storm that swept White-Gold and the Celestial Mandate into the hands of Men, all the diadochi of the Heartlands were recalled to Weye-on-Rumar to take special council around the chaise of the High-Highness.
Ostensibly, the cenacle was convened for the maintenance of our young Imperium, as ever, proceeding in byzantine intrications of well-spoken, stone-dense court volleys of policy and rhetoric, lobbed, quite under-the-hand, between well-silked nests of asps and vultures. But is was an open secret among the patricians that Her health, the breath especially, had not been the finest for some time - and after a quite terrible fall the previous summer (tripped by a wild caprice of her beloved whistlepig, Polchra), thick-bodied eunuchs were posted at Her side at all times, plus 2-score handmaids and a full complement of Legion healers kept on retainer just down the hall.
Gathering around Her, her withered fleshform small and untauted by the seasons of war and worry and spidered with shallow rivers of the most noble, yet unfirm purple, there could be no doubt amid the wetness of Her tussives that this was to be the last greeting with our Elder Mother. So all the good legates cast banner arguments and weapons into the steward's urn and we took turns, just holding her dainty brown finger-bones, stroking the thin, gray crown, and singing recounts of the era that had passed into mothtalk.