DCG - Faction 1 - House Zhang

Joe, who is desiging the look of the cards (interestingly enough he's got his own company and he does this design stuff too) wanted a run down on all the houses so he could get a feel for them. I figure why not just let everyone know what's going on with them so that there's a little bit of material already there.

The Zhang house was one of the first three founding houses. They are the only house to have been the Emperor twice in the past four hundred years with their last pass as emperor being only just 75 years ago. They are known far and wide as people who propose peace and stability instead of open conflict. It's why they were drawn to the idea of the Imperial Ruling House accord that started the current timeline. They were drafted in -8 IHE and were signed on 0IHE which marked the start of the Imperial House. The Zhang house was chosen to lead the Empire during that time and led for 150 years.

That dynasty fell when Zhang Hui introduced new great houses to the original three. War broke out between the Zhang House and the Campbell House. Ultimately this led to the ascention of the LaJoie House which upheld the Zhang decision. In part this was done because the LaJoies felt that if they ignored the Zhang Hui edicts then other emperors would ignore that which they didn't see fit their reign. It created the precedent that anything a previous emperor had done couldn't be rescinded, modified certainly but nothing ever left the books of law.

The last Zhang Dynasty was much shorter than the first Dynasty. It only lasted two generations as Zhang Yi died childless, she had decided that she didn't want to have children, and so the Imperial House fell to the current Nasra House. In keeping with being first they were the first House to lose their Dynasty through a lack of successors. Yi felt that dynasties that were in power for too long frequently feel to corruption and the loss of the house through a peaceful process would be less damaging financially to the family than if they lost it through war.

The Zhang House, being one of the founding houses, is not known for anything in particular. They do a little bit of everything, from running trading ships to making weapons to manufacturing products to arts and culture. In fact, if there is one thing to be said, the Zhang House has more artists in their space than any other. That doesn't make them weak, far from it. The Zhangs have the most skilled military minds in all the galaxy. They're known for being able to take victory away from the hungry jaws of defeat using unorthodox and sometimes insane tactics.

This skill will be put to the test as the Ndebele House feels that they need to expand their territory a little bit and their first target is the Zhang House. There is a solar system with a couple of high resource planets that have yet to be fully explored by the Zhangs and the Ndebele want, almost need these resources to keep their militarism and their expansion going.