(Note: This is strictly player-written non-canonical material. Enjoy at your own risk. -Miedvied )

There are those - O ignorant they! - that have come to believe that Ammeni is characterized by but three people. The Lord, the Slave, and the Dagger. Thise false and shallow glance at our most beautiful of cultures is deeply flawed. Little else can be expected, of course; the Khale and their ilk have become so much like the animals among which they dwell that they have forgotten it is on two legs upon which they walk, not four! And Maldor, Maldor views us with the eyes of a sullen child (for, like a child, it sits among its heaps of toppled toys and refuses to stand up on its legs once more). What care we, then, for the thoughts of rutting animals or scuff-kneed pups?

Let it be known, then, that this study has not been written for the perusal of our lessers. Rather, to celebrate the anniversary of the passing of our Great Patriarch, this piece has been written to share the joy and wonder of our stunning lords among all the people of Ammeni. Rejoice, and be in awe of your guardians! - Freelance historian Rohais Zuria, a week prior to her untimely end by poiture-laced paper-cut.

Despite the propagandist tendencies of our kindly revisionist historian, there is a nugged of truth to be acknowledged - it seems that every third Ammeni is a freelance poisoner or assassin. One would think, however, in a land of such ecstatically whimsical aristocracy and carefully cultured killers that more subtle methods of eliminating ones enemies may be discovered. And, if you were to posit such a believe, you would be correct.

I need not go on at length describing the Ammeni's mildly unorthodox military organizations; the historian Duval of House Quennetta has already written exhaustively on the topic. Obviously, their particular regional characteristics make them discinlined to large cavalry-based armies, and the prevalance of disease (which thrives in their particular humid lands) creates great logistical difficulties in organizing and maintaining large high-density populations (such as those neccasary to maintain a standing army).

That assassins are effective at eliminating one's inter- and intra- House competitors needs not be argued for, any more than I need point out that no assassin can succeed in war with a foreign land. It is worthwhile, then, to organize a systematic study of the methods by which this nation, discinlined to armies as it is, conquer its foes.

Today's particular study shall examine the group that was once known as the Knights of the Thrice-Bled Lotus. Having already established the various reasons that cavalry-and-infantry armies are unpopular among the Ammeni (the great prevalence of swamps and deltas as the nation's most common battlefields, diseases among standing troops, the large number of bodies of water that prevent any great trafficking of horses) it goes without saying that these knights are not mail-clad cavalary riding amidst the chaotic rutting of melee for lord and light.

No, according to the evidence I have uncovered - and scant evidence it is, unearthed in the document cellars of House Valiere, many decades old - it is likely that groups such as these knights were the primary methods of destabilizing foes. Let us outline in general, then, the primary tactics utilized:

1. Assassination
   1. Unlike the typical assassinations characteristic of the Ammeni in which particular foes are eliminated, the Thrice-Bled Lotus is strict with its assassination targets. In an effort to maintain a low-profile, its killings almost uniformly avoid the appearance of assassination (such as a dagger in the back, or an overt poisoning). Its targets, moreover, are usually neccessary to create political de-stabilization or a power vacuum to allow the execution of the Thrice Bled Lotus' long-term plans. The assassinations are, without exception, never an end in themselves. In situations of such simplistic goals, mere assassins (or potential recruits to the Lotus) would be utilized instead.
2. Drug-trafficking
   1. Having access to the herbalists of the House sponsoring the Thrice-Bled Lotus (my research has heretofore indicated that it was likely House Valiere, but this is far from confirmed), the Thrice-Bled Lotus seems to have made a standard practice of importing a great deal of highly-addictive drugs into regions in which they were to begin operations. These served three purposes:
      1. The sale of drugs allowed for the establishment of cover identities which aided these espionage agents in maintaining an effective cover in foreign land.
      2. The sale of drugs, moreover, provided a local source of funds to provide the agents with whatever resources they need to maintain operations. Often these funds must sponsor activities such as bribes, securing weapons, leasing mercenaries, and so on.
      3. In the latter stages of their operations, it became not uncommon for the Thrice-Bled Lotus to flood the cities of their targetted foes with cheap, powerful drugs. By establishing widespread addictions, the Lotus may, as neccesary, either:
         1. Cause political unrest by greatly reducing the flow of drugs into the cities of their targets, resulting in an increase in violent crime and often outright rioting as the populace attempts to purchase (or steal, or kill for) whatever small quantities of the drug remain.
         2. Black-mail the target political body by threatening to do the aforementioned.
3. Underworld consolidation
   1. Their operations taking place predominantly among the underground - assassination, drug smuggling - it is not unreasonable to believe that the Lotus' first area of infiltration in a new region was, in fact, the local illicit networks. There is unlikely a better cover for a smuggler than that of being a smuggler.
   2. Politics and economy being as common-place among criminals as among politicians (if one cares to draw the distinction), it seems to have been standard practice to attempt to snare the reins of any local criminal organizations. This often required the judicious use of power-vacuum assassinations as noted above. Control of these criminal organizations provided the Thrice-Bled Lotus with a variety of benefits:
      1. Without having to deal with competition in their drug-smuggling operations, greater control over the activities in question allow the Lotus more precise maneuvering and larger profit margins.
      2. The willful escalation of crime against the lower-classes often aided them, in combination with public oration and more subtle forms of stirring about unrest, to increase the generally-ubiquitous tension that constantly hums in the heart of every peasant and slave in the Ammeni lands.
      3. Thugs and other underworld figures offered an incentive of legitimate posts of power following a possible rebellion are often particularly useful pawns in attempts to overturn an existing nation.
4. Fomenting political dissidence
   1. One primary technique for doing this, as aforementioned, being the influence of the population via the importation of highly addictive drugs.
   2. Knights of the Thrice-Bled Lotus were often as well trained in influence, politics, and the art of shaking hands in shadowed halls as they were in assassination and smuggling. Some documents pertaining to the origins of the Ammeni-Khale war seem to indicate that it was not uncommon for the Lotus to incite civil war and encourage military uprisings against existing governments.
   3. Moreover, even as they manipulated legitimate secular figures, they often used criminals to add piss to the cooking pot, as one Khalean colloquialism puts it. Increasing the activity of criminals, for instance, against nobles and common men often brings about retaliation. The appropriate incentives and whispers brings about an exaggerated retaliation - one that often targets the common man more than the criminals in question. By playing both sides against the middle, it is often easier than it ought to be to incite large-scale rioting.

As one can see, these methods are all tied to a single central methodology. The Knights of the Thrice-Bled Lotus were used not to end the lives of individual men, but of entire governments. Though the complete destruction of an existing nation was often impossible, wreaking enough havoc to destabilize a region for decades and completely nullify them as a military threat was well within the power of the Thrice-Bled Lotus. It is likely, in fact, that they were used as a precursor to a more orthodox military invasion. This theory is encouraged by the social particulars that would accompany an Ammmenite invasion: bringing their own drugs with them would pacify once more the very populace they drugged. Moreover, the establishment of a slave-cast (consisting primarily of exotic foreigners) allowed for a "social release valve" in which the previously-unstable lower-classes now have a class below them against which to vent their spleen.

Now, I am confident that many of my colleagues will demand to see the primary documents from which I draw such wild and heretofore unknown studies of depraved (depraved? clever!) invasion tactics. I will provide these documents as soon as practical; one can imagine that compiling such things in any exhaustive manner is rather difficult. Judging by the fragmented and well-hidden nature of the documents, it appears that they were not at all meant to be discovered. I suspect that, in their time, the Thrice-Bled Lotus was an altogether unknown group, carefully cultivating their secrecy from all save the House that sponsored them.

I suppose in some manner one could call the years of the Shadow a blessing: if such a group had not been eliminated by the chaos of the preceding generations, I imagine I would be killed before this information could ever see the light of day.

-from the last known letter of military historian Karlo Montaigu, posted from the House Valiere one day previous to his mysterious and uninvestigated disappearance.