Rise of Tamrug the Negotiator and the Empire of Endless Compromise

Upon my arrival in the famed city of Ctesiphon, I was struck first not by its grandeur—which, I might add, remains considerable even by parallel-world standards—but by the sheer abundance of bureaucratic order. Walking the streets, I noticed citizens queueing with quasi-religious fervor at what appeared to be municipal mediation centers, where they filed complaints not in anger but with the precision of a scribe copying holy texts. Even the air seemed heavy with decisive fragrances: jasmine and frankincense wafted from markets to council chambers in a shared homage to calm deliberation. It did not take long to deduce that this empire, unlike its counterpart in other timelines, was driven not by conquest but by the omnipresent ethos of its mythical figurehead, Tamrug the Negotiator.

Where I might have expected to see statues of Rostam taming dragons or slaying foes, I instead found an austere sculpture of Tamrug seated at a low, circular table. His hands are open, palms upward—an eerily literal embodiment of his famed diplomatic philosophy, “Persuasion lies in the honesty of your empty palms.” Nearby, a boy about eight years old offered me some figs while parroting Tamrug’s axioms in singsong rhetoric. It was endearing at first, until I realized he expected me to offer my own “Tamrugian moral of goodwill” in exchange. On the spot, I mumbled something about the virtue of universal fig-sharing, to which he solemnly replied that such simplicity was foundational but trite. Apparently, even a child in this culture has mastered constructive criticism.

The historical dominance of Tamrug as a cultural touchstone has rewritten more than just public values—it has reshaped the very fabric of governance. Royal decrees are rare and almost vestigial, with real power held by sprawling councils of scribes and “Peace Deliberation Circles.” Their deliberations are inscribed verbatim into scrolls, which are distributed en masse to the temple archives, a system that at first struck me as wonderfully progressive. However, later in my visit, I witnessed an auctioneer trying to sell a shipment of silver urns while requiring prospective buyers to first read a three-page decree on their permitted uses. Those who failed to quote the decree accurately were promptly disqualified from bidding.

Curiously, Tamrug’s legacy has corrupted even the notion of heroism itself. Ask any local to recount their favorite tale from the “Songs of Tamrug” and they will invariably describe situations of almost comic mundanity. My favorite example involves Tamrug arranging a compromise between his father’s rival tribal leaders by having each faction take turns singing verses of poetic complaint over a communal dinner. Supposedly, they grew so impressed with one another’s rhyming prowess that they forgot what they had been fighting about. When I described Rostam—a figure of legendary status in many other timelines—as a fierce warrior, my innkeeper sniffed disdainfully and muttered something about “unrefined solutions.” At breakfast the following morning, he served me a plate of apricots arranged in the shape of a concentric circle, explaining that the illusion of order helps digestion. This was oddly fitting, albeit unsettling as a metaphor for this empire’s ethos of compromise.

There are, however, problems beneath the surface. Tamrug’s reforms, while keeping the peace, have slowed decision-making to a ludicrous crawl. Frontier defenses flounder as governors preoccupy themselves with drafting overly polite letters to invaders. Even daily life is saturated with exhausting minutiae. I ventured into the bazaar to buy a scarf, only to be cornered by the merchant into a fifteen-minute discussion comparing weaving patterns in adjacent provinces. When I suggested we skip to the final price, he laughed as if I’d proposed sacrilege. In this land, mediation is an art, not an obstacle, as they so often remind themselves.

While several aspects of Tamrugian ideology resonate with my more optimistic notions of civilization, others leave me baffled. Consider the taming of martial ambition: armies are reduced to passive peacekeeping forces, their generals now little more than administrators of rules of engagement. Diplomats outnumber cavalrymen three to one, and each military camp is outfitted with a debating tent where soldiers-in-training learn to argue (civilly, of course) before ever touching a blade. I met one such soldier-scribe during my walk to the riverbanks, and he swore that his planned oration on barley tariffs for an upcoming council vote was just as important as his swordsmanship trials. He then spent twenty minutes explaining the benefits of co-governing river crossings with captured Roman envoys, at which point I started to regret asking.