fandomhigh | Diplomacy, Relationships & Tactics: the Art of War [Tuesday, Period 3]

Another semester, another batch of bright and shining students. Ghanima sat on her desk, hiding her smile behind her tea as they filed in; mentally cataloging the new and familiar faces. As students arrived, they would find that her classroom was set-up a bit differently than most...desks (minus hers) were gone in favor of Ghanima's preferred set-up of rugs, cushions, some divans, and large pillows, the classroom having been redone in Fremen-style for the rest of the semester.

The moment the bell rang, her eyes snapped from the door to the children seated around the room. "Good afternoon and welcome," she said in a clear voice that carried effortlessly. "This is the Art of War, and I am Lady Ghanima Atreides. You may address me as Miss Atreides, Lady Ghanima, Miss Ghanima, or some variation thereof. If you are in the wrong class, please feel free to leave at this time. For those of you whom I have had in class before," she smiled suddenly, looking far less severe. "Welcome back."

"The Art of War." Scooping up her two piles of handouts off her desk, Ghanima began wandering up and down the piles of pillows as she talked, handing them out. "A Chinese military treatise that was written during the 6th century BC by Sun Tzu. Composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare, it has long been praised as the definitive work on military strategies and tactics of its time. It is divided into 13 chapters, or P'ien, and the collection is referred to as being one Ch'üan, or chronicle."

"The book is not only popular among military theorists, but also among political leaders and those in business management. The book addresses strategy in a broad fashion, despite the title, touching upon public administration and planning. The text outlines theories of battle but also advocates diplomacy and cultivating relationships with other nations as essential to the health of the state."

"Sun Tzu himself is a bit of a mystery, and historians debate whether or not he was a real historical figure. Which, really, is par for the course with anyone truly interesting." Ghanima smiled at the class brilliantly. "If you're larger than life, they'll never believe you were real."

"For our first lesson," Ghanima moved to the front of the room, picking up her chalk to write quickly;

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will fight without danger in battles.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

"Know thy enemy, know thyself. We'll cover it more in-depth later, but for today I would like you to go around the room and introduce yourselves. Give us your name, class, and some random fact about yourself. Pay attention to what your classmates have to say, you never know when such information could come in handy."

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"I'm Julius, uh, Quetz." Why he was still trying to use that when his brothers had shown up was a mystery, especially since he was still really bad at passing it off as real. "Junior? I don't really have any other rank or title."

He was no Fang of Bethesda, that was damn sure.

Oh god. What was a random fact he could share about himself that no one could use to figure out anything important? "My mother named us in alphabetical order - A, B, C, all the way down to J. I'm uh, the youngest."

The other clans didn't call her 'Bethesda the Broodmare' for nothing.

"Goodness. Does your world's alphabet have the same letters as English?" Ghanima asked, curious. "If I did that in Fremen or Chakobsa, it could get quite interesting with the names."

She'd get to the equivilent of 'J' too, afterall.

"My father named me Ghanima, a spoil of war, as one of his last acts. I wonder sometimes if his precognition forsaw me teaching this class."

"Yes, ma'am," Julius said. "I'm from Earth - an Earth," he amended quickly, "--about seventy years in the future. I grew up in New Mexico."

AND THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN AN EVEN BETTER FACT TO SHARE, JULIUS YOU UTTER IDIOT.

Some of that realization was bleeding into his expression. As chagrin.

Oooh, but you were getting so much side-eye right now, Julius. Because Juillenne was aware of the names of several of your siblings, three of which were also J-names. And okay, quadruplets in humans wasn’t entirely unheard of (there was literally a whole Procedure in her world for what happened when a Queen gave birth to quadruplets instead of the usual triplets), but being one of a set of quadruplets and having nine other siblings?

Didn’t add up. Or did add up, but to far too many children.

(Juillenne had never heard of the quiverfull movement, or that’s where her mind might have gone.)

And that wasn't the kind of pop culture Julius had studied, so the best he'd be able to come up with was some kind of screeched, Octomom! before attempting to smokebomb his way out of the conversation.

Hmm. He needed smokebombs.

Though right now he was just giving Jules a confused look for the side-eye.

What?

Jules just rolled her eyes.

"You've mentioned several of your siblings to me," she murmured, sotto-voice. "And aside from Bob, all of them have names that also start with J."

That was an absurd number of siblings for a human, Julius.

OH.

OH THAT WAS RIGHT. HE HAD DONE THAT, HADN'T HE?

"Multiple births aren't rare for my family," he whispered back. "And...I don't have the number of siblings you think I do." He had way more. "Not all of them, um, survived."

Chelsie and Conrad were the only C's left. Bob was the only one of the B's. And Julius was pretty sure there hadn't been an A alive for centuries.

Julius, how were you so bad at lying that even when you were telling the truth (from a certain point of view), you made it sound shifty as all get-out?

"I see," Juillenne said in a tone that very much indicated her suspicions were not at all assuaged here.

He gave her a helpless shrug. He did that pretty well at least. "Life expectancy isn't all that long in my family."

She she knew! With his straight up fears of being killed by his own kin and all.

Though, honestly, that was in a scale of dragon lifetimes.

One of these days, Heartstr-errrrrQuetz, one of these days, Juillenne would absolutely confront you head on about your bullshit.

However, she respected his privacy enough not to go any further with it in the middle of class.

"Yeah, that much I got," she agreed, since, well. She did know that.

Oh that day was probably coming sooner than anyone thought - and sooner than that, even, if Nina, Jules, and Uly started comparing notes again.

Julius was so, so bad at this.

He just shrugged. "My mom thought having a lot of kids was the best way to build a dynasty," he said, which was true but also a poor choice of words.

"Dynasties aren't all they're cracked up to be, believe me," Juillenne said flatly.

Fennbirn's Queens had protected and nurtured the island for thousands of years, but somewhere along the line 'protecting and nurturing the island' had been twisted into something that was more about gaining personal power, and, well...

The Goddess had clearly not liked that, at all.

Oh noes, he saw what he'd done there.

"Oh, not, like a dynasty-dynasty!" Exactly that kind of dynasty, actually. "Not, like, royalty. More like...a fam-family name. You know. Family."

Dynasties were how you got magic mist that turned people inside-out, Bethesda.

DID YOU WANT MAGIC MIST THAT MADE PEOPLE'S INSIDES INTO THEIR OUTSIDES?

"Right."

...They both knew the answer to that question, Jules, c'mon now.

AND SHE HADN'T EVEN MET BETHESDA YET.

But now Julius was just kind of hunched down and, you know. Reading his handout VERY INTENTLY.

Not avoiding Jules' Looking Eyes or anything. Just being a good student!

Diplomacy, Relationships & Tactics: the Art of War [Tuesday, Period 3]

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Re: Know Thy Enemy/Ally (Introductions)

Re: Know Thy Enemy/Ally (Introductions)

Re: Know Thy Enemy/Ally (Introductions)

Re: Know Thy Enemy/Ally (Introductions)

Re: Know Thy Enemy/Ally (Introductions)

Re: Know Thy Enemy/Ally (Introductions)

Re: Know Thy Enemy/Ally (Introductions)

Re: Know Thy Enemy/Ally (Introductions)

Re: Know Thy Enemy/Ally (Introductions)

Re: Know Thy Enemy/Ally (Introductions)

Re: Know Thy Enemy/Ally (Introductions)