The story of the Great Horned Rat had circulated through Turanze for thousands of years, yet it had never received the attention of the Clan Warriors.
On one hand, the Turan People valued ancestor worship. Even the lowliest ratfolk had not sprung from cracks in the rocks. Finding a brave and fearless ancestor to gild their own faces with glory was only Human Nature.
Even the masters perched high above could not deprive slaves and cannon fodder of the right to daydream.
More importantly, the masters discovered that when the ratfolk believed in the existence of the Great Horned Rat God, they could grit their teeth and endure the torment and suffering of the present world all the better. This allowed the great clans to squeeze even more labor and fighting strength from these humble wretches.
After all, according to the faith of the Great Horned Rat God, all ratfolk had to atone for the cowardice of their ancestors thousands of years ago.
Only once their period of atonement had ended would the Great Horned Rat descend upon Turanze once more, lead them out of all suffering, and establish their own clan.
In other words, for a devout ratfolk believer, before the Great Horned Rat God descended, the only thing he ought to do was accept his lowly status, silently atone beside the thousands-degree furnaces of the Casting Workshop, on arena platforms crusted layer upon layer with entrails and blood, and amid battlefields carpeted with corpses—then silently go and die.
The lower-class ratfolk's belief in the Great Horned Rat God was not a bad thing for the great clans ruling Turanze.
At least, it had not been a bad thing for Turan Civilization, where "prosperity" and "glory" had alternated endlessly over the past several thousand years.
The problem was that,