Karses II, Friend of Caesar, Heir to the Loam Coast, and Descendant of the Divine Clay Elf Bloodline:Condition: Fine
Holdings:
Cash Reserves (Aproximately 4.7% of Imperial Coin in Circulation)
29% of Total Shares in 'Sons of Caesar Trading Company'
45% of Voting Shares in 'Sons of Caesar Trading Company'
Mansion in the Heartland City of Portum
4 Docks in the City of Portum
Luxurious Apartment with the Imperial Palace
Country Home along the Imperial Highway
x19 Shops and Workshops (Scattered Across the Imperial Heartland)
x17 Vineyards and Plantations (Scattered Across the Known World)
x14 Mines (Mainly Precious Metals and Gems, Scattered Across the Known World)
x30 Imperial Merchantmen (Divided into two fleets)
'Wayward Clay' (Personal Flagship made from Enchanted Ceramic. Armed with two ballista and a crew of trained soldiers. Coming of age present from your father)
Traits:
Businesself
Networker
Negoiater
Public Speaker
Wealthy
Well Traveled
Greedy
Ambitious
Empathetic
Self Controlled
Living Legend (Civil Rights Icon, God Incarnate)
You spend the rest of dinner questioning Caesar and Father about your surviving family and Clay Elf customs. After dinner, you retire to your chambers, and spend the evening meditating on marriage, family, and Clay Elf customs.
Although you do not know your family well, over the years you have come to know of the exploits of your numerous siblings. Most that you are familiar with are soldiers and sailors, and neither Xamut nor Caesar could say for sure weather or not they survived (and will survive) both the war and imperial justice. Xamut tells you that after the Tall Ears War, he had decided that he had enough fighters and potential heirs amoung his offspring, and that all his children since then have been reared towards quite lives in the Priesthood, Arts, or Government Bureaucracy. You have just over two dozen of these unremarkable siblings, both legitimate and acknowledged bastards, including Xami, the girl your father would like you to marry. Many of them are still children, and those that are not have just recently come of age, so its unlikely any of them will be killed.
Of your twelve more notable legitimate siblings, the ones not more than a decade younger than you with deeds to yjrot name, you are only sure of the fate of two.
Xamut V, who fled to join up with the sea-demon, is your fraternal twin, and as the oldest son of Xamut IV still living at home, would have been the heir apparent. The younger Xamut is a fierce and bloody pirate, with a reputation of being every bit his father's equal at sea.
The world around the Central Sea romanticizes you and him as friendly rivals and foils to each other. Twin brothers, one raised as an elf savage, the other as an imperial elite. He commands war fleets, you command merchant fleets. You advocate for rights of elves within the empire, he attempts to advance elf rights by fighting against it.
Most assume you and your brother were in constant communication up until the war began, but in reality you only met once since being separated as infants (at the launch party for
Wayward Clay, the flagship your father sent you as a 14th birthday gift), and conversed by messenger on three occasions.
Pulchra Canis, a sister two years younger than you, is the only one of your siblings you know well. At the start of the Tall Ears War, as part of the deal to secure a temporary alliance between Xamut IV and Caesar Menas, she was married off to Brutus Canis, the most prominent elf in the empire aside from yourself. Brutus, the halfbreed bastard (and sole surviving) son of of a prominent senator, is your friend and mentor, considered by you and many others as the father of the Elf Rights Movement. By the time he became your brother in law, Brutus was serving as the first imperial senator of elfish blood, and your sister, trained trained to be a soldier from a young age, was thrust into the role of imperial socialite. Pulchra, shockingly, found this new life to her liking, and now spends her time hosting parties, speaking on elf issues, and doting on her triplet sons. Pulchra is teaching her boys the art of war, and is mulling over the idea of joining the army alongside them when they come of age.
Of course,
now you know Captain Itializa is your sister as well. Although imperial superstition will tell you woman at sea bring bad luck, Clay Elves are stereotypicaly considered to be master sailors, and even females of your race are sought after for important positions on-board various ships. Itializa lives up to the stereotype, and then some.
She is one of the few Captains entrusted by the Sons of Caesar Trading Company to navigate the stormy and rebel infested waters along the Port Pluto Trade Route. Itializa is not the monogamous type, and keeps a lover or two in each port. When you are both in town, she makes a point of sharing your bed, but you also know she is involved with Petrov, your steward, and Mina, the daughter of your head chef. Thinking about it, it makes sense she is your sister, as Itializa's business sense and skill as a negotiator rival your own, but unlike you she is driven by wanderlust rather than greed and ambition, and has no desire to rise above her current position, which allows her to see the world.
Checking the company charts, Itializa is scheduled to be at the Eastern Port City of Securis in a month and a half. As you are heading east yourself, you don't have to go too far out of your way if you wish to have words with her.Your thoughts then drift to marriage law and custom.
The Loam Coast is to become an imperial province, and imperial law only allows for a citizen to have one legal wife who may inherit property and bear legitimate children. To father a bastard is among the most disgraceful acts in imperial culture. To legally acknowledge a bastard not birthed by one's wife, one must get a declaration from a judge. This might be hard for most people, but as Governor, you happen to be the highest judge in the province. Governors in more exotic provinces also have a good deal of discretion in determining laws regarding what is permissible regarding concubines and adultery.
As for Clay Elf customs, the God King is more or less free to keep as many women as he wants. Your father didn't keep any pampered concubines or mistresses, as he was too often at sea to entertain too many lovers on land. Aside from your mother (whom he caused a scandal by marrying, as she was not a close relative), it was the highborn females serving in his fleet that provided companionship to Xamut IV.
The Pharaoh may declare any one or more female as a 'wife' whose children may be considered as heirs, but traditionally the eldest son of the wife closest to her husband in age and blood becomes the next Pharaoh. Clay Elves are usually born in litters of two to four, so the ideal wife for producing an heir would be one's own twin sister. There was once such a girl for you,
Xexllas, born alongside you and Xamut the younger, but she was slain in the early days of the Long Ears War. If you intend to build a Harem, you have a few main concerns. First being your choice of 'legal' wife; She and her children will be entitled to your property under imperial law, and although you can ensure your belongings in the Loam Coast go to whomever you wish in case of your death through control of the local judges, your belongings elsewhere in the world will almost inevitably fall to your 'legal' family under imperial law. This also means, in all likelihood, you only get to marry once for the sake of gaining land or allies.
Your second concern is that of your office. Once the Loam Coast becomes an official Province, the title of Pharaoh will be largely ceremonial. Your power will come from the office of Governor, and the Governor serves at the pleasure of Caesar. You would have to try pretty damn hard to make Caesar Menas strip you of the governership, but barring tragedy, you will outlive him. Caesar Prudens, the heir apparent to the imperial throne, is a childhood friend of yours, but he is also a stickler for tradition and social order. You are not sure he would tolerate a governor who has 'gone native'. On that note, it might be particularly hard to keep the offices of Pharaoh and Governor one and the same after your death; The priests will want to elect the son of a highborn clay elf who is related to you as the next Pharaoh, and the Capital will want to give real power to a child educated in the imperial heartland and ideally born of your legal wife, if they choose to keep the governorship in your family at all.
When it comes to matters of homosexuality, your position as Pharaoh puts you in a uniquely tough spot. Neither imperial nor clay elf culture makes a big deal over same-sex lovers, (a same sex extramarital affair is in fact less disgraceful to an imperial, as it cannot produce bastards), but
it would be sacrilegious for a living god to submit to a mere mortal in the bedroom. Unless your chosen male lover is a close relative, and thus divinity in and of themselves, or you allow a reputable third party witness into your bedchamber to testify that you are the one in the dominant position on every occasion, a gay relationship would quickly become a scandal for you.
---
The following morning you write to a few key elf advocates, and inform them that you have some business to take care of in the eastern provinces, but if you decide that the issue at hand is one that your investors and underlings can take care of without your supervision, you will return fairly soon to handle the Blackwood situation before likely receiving some office or another in your newly conquered homeland. Time is of the essence for you, so you encourage your allies
to have a delegation organized to leave under your leadership as soon as you are able to return.You then head to the docks, and board the
Wayward Clay. Your flagship is stocked and ready to travel at a moments notice, so your departure is only delayed by the amount of time it takes to round up a number of crewmen willing to take an abrupt and extended trip. You direct the worthy Captain Tiber to point the bow east and sail until told to stop. You don't know exactly where you are headed quite yet, (The Eastern Provinces cover a good sized area), but since you know the general direction, you can sail while you make up your mind. Captain Tiber is clearly a bit annoyed that you don't have a destination in mind quite yet, but he does as told without complaint, as you know he always will. Tiber is an old sailor, who fought against your father in the war that gave you to Caesar, and respects your family as worthy and honorable foes. He considers himself forever in your debt, as it is thanks to you he was allowed to marry his long time elfish lover.
The sea and winds are calm today, so your journey does not make much progress in terms of distance, but just before sundown, you encounter three frightening warships flying both demonic and mercenary flags. You recognize one of them at once as
Breaking Lust, the flagship of The Blue Witch Tsunamia. This is no coincidence; Tsunamia can read the fortune of herself and others in the entrails of her victims, and keeps tabs on her regular clients this way to know where she needs to be to find work.
You hail
Breaking Lust, request to speak with Tsunamia. You are quickly invited on board, and lead to the mercenary's private chamber. You find the Witch naked save for a metal ring on her tail, a long thin barbed appendage like that of a stingray. She is laying on her belly and elbows in such a way as to prominently display her breasts. A servant is working with an ink and needle on her left buttcheek, likely applying another one of those glowing runic tattoos to her blue-gray skin. She looks at you with her glowing yellow eyes, smiles, and apologizes for her state of undress, blatantly fibbing that she wasn't expecting you.
Trying and utterly failing not to stare, You call her on her lie, and comment on the fact that she only has two escorts ships with her; Tsunamia usually likes to make an impression by traveling with the majority of her fleet.
The witch offers an alluring grin, before her face turns serious.
"Honestly, I'm busy on other business. I've heard from a dependable source that a tribe of Acid Elves have found an old shrine containing previously undiscovered demonic runes. I have to check those out, so my fleet is scattered across various ports, rounding up some mercenaries who know how to fight on land to run out the elves and allow me to research in peace. Only reason I came to find you is because the entrails say that this meeting is going to be extremely fortuitous for at least one of us. So what business do you bring?"You know in general, Tsunamia will launch raids for you if you agree to reimburse her for ships and sailors lost, and purchase any loot her forces obtain at one and a half times the going market rate. If Tsunamia is really serious about raiding the ruins, and is already hireing men to do so,
you would likely have to reimburse her for what mercenaries she already rounded up, and offer her a much higher purchase price for the loot than normal, if you wish to lure her to your cause. You might also offer her future help on her rune hunt in exchange for dealing with the monopoly. Acid Elf country is huge, so you can't be sure if the shrine is close, but it does overlap with the southern parts of Loam Coast.
Depending on location, logistics, and the state of your province, you might be able to help her with her campaign once you come into power. You could also try to win your friend access to the shrine via diplomacy; Acid Elves can be very dangerous and unpredictable, so few would bother reasoning with them, but many tribes idolize you for convincing the Imperial Military High command to ditch its 'kill on sight' policy towards their race. Of course, you don't know enough to make specific promises regarding diplomacy or military support right now, and are unsure if a vague promise of future help would be attractive to Tsunamia.
Of course, there are other items to discuss with the witch. She might be able to help you get back in touch with your brother Xamut the Younger, and you have been mulling around the idea of some sort of long term alliance, perhaps even marriage, with the magical mercenary sailor.
Author
Topic: (SG) Vassal: Rise of a Pharaoh (Read 23636 times)