Father would tell you that a champion has to be as wicked as they are quick. Mother would say that every detail matters. The difference between glory and ruin can be measured in a single stride. You take both of their lessons into account today, because the Races don’t start with a gunshot. They start now, your boots coated in red-desert dust, at the Great Display.

A crowd of five hundred gathers. Each of them purchased an absurdly expensive ticket in order to attend. You scan the ranks and recognize a good number of the waiting faces. It’s a crowd of royal cousins, influential gamblers, renowned journalists. These are the tastemakers who will curate the Races for public consumption. They’ll take back the information they learn today and spread it like a flame across the Empire.

An announcer begins. You half listen to his rendition of the story of the Great Display. Every part of the Races is a reminder. Each ceremony is a nod to the gods and the wars your people won with them at your side. The Great Display honors one of their very first gifts: the phoenix horses.

You have heard this story thousands of times. In past years you have stood where the gathered crowd stands now, proud of your lineage. But this year the presence of the Longhand and the Dividian serve as a reminder. It is not a story about one group of people, but three. It begins with the Dividian ancestors arriving at your shores. Invaders. Their great ships numbering in the thousands and their soldiers pouring into the coastal cities with every intent of conquering your ancestors. Until the gods answered.

The Madness opened the gates of the underworld. The Fury honored your people’s blood sacrifices and sent thousands of flaming horses stampeding into battle. Those horses were the ancestors of the same phoenixes your people ride today. Their arrival marked a turning point for all three cultures. The Ashlords became rulers. The Dividian were defeated, abandoned on foreign soil, and eventually subjugated. Lastly, a group of disgruntled Ashlords headed north after the war, disliking their people’s sudden taste for the gods. Proud men and women who refused to be dependent on something bigger than themselves. The town they founded grew into a city, which grew into a state, which blossomed into a country: the Reach.

It’s a story you will never forget, and so as this year’s announcer retells it, your eyes drift instead to your competition. Etzli stands on your right. She’s shorter than you by a breath. Everything about her is reserved. She wears the Race-standard jacket, little makeup, her hair up in a tidy ponytail. She doesn’t smile. Her hands do not shake. Like you, she was born for this.