You ponder the conundrum before you for some time, and an eternity of internal debate passes before you come to a decision, though it is far from final. This Capra emperor... Held alongside their adversary their intellect is nothing particularly awe-inspiring but their devotion to the advancement of cultured civilization is commendable, for in it lies innumerable paths to discovery, and it for this reason alone that he is the first of the pair you'll deign to observe. Of course, some time remains before you'll determine which of the two you're going to be supporting, possibly even both, or perhaps neither. Finding the empire's capital is as easy as following the well-worn but subtle paths across the steppe until you reach the point they intersect, in a primitive citadel home to some two-hundred thousand souls.
An enormous amount of quarries surround the crude walls, and in each labor hundreds of stoop-backed and hollow-eyed mortals. Scanning through their minds, you're curious to find that the overwhelming majority of these are criminals both heinous and trivial, prisoners captured from nomad encampments, and volunteers who've opted to undergo backbreaking labor in favor of taking on a blood oath to fight for the empire in the coming conflict. The remaining minority are a handful of copper-helmeted overseers, who are tasked to record progress by chalking ashen ruins onto stone tablets whilst keeping those working compliant through the threat of violence, as administered through a strange sort of spear with a long, leaf-shaped blade and short, thick handle.
Similarly interesting are the massive fields of wavy, crunchy looking stalks, manned almost entirely by well-organized volunteers who nonetheless struggle from their harsh and unforgiving soil. It seems they haven't yet discovered the mysteries of crop rotation and the sameness of their crops will inevitably lead to famine in the century after the next, if not several decades sooner. The nomads claim their difficulties are called down by the ancestors and that the Eternal Conqueror is too weak to preserve them, whereas the empire believe that the increased challenge of farming enough to subsist is a test of their strength and faith.
The palace is obvious enough, an intricately engraved and incredibly sturdy structure of mortared stone slabs three stories larger than the next biggest buildings, and your immaterial essence feels no need to bother getting through the diligent guards posted out-front. From there, ascertaining the location of the emperor is as easy as spotting the extremely tired, slightly scrawny mortal sitting on the uncomfortable but fancy chair in the spacious and well-lit central chamber. Pausing, it occurs to you that you don't have a throne, and furthermore, you aren't sure if you care but that's something to worry about later.
More important is searching this Capra's mind to see the truth of themselves.
Rolling 1d100 against 1d6: 56 VS 1
He's so sleep-deprived you reach in without the slightest difficulty, and soon pry into the deepest, darkest secrets of his psyche. Normally, invading someone's privacy isn't something you're fond of, but given that the fate of an entire plane may rest on his shoulders there's little reason not to. You discover the following in short order:
- The emperor's name is Cidran the XIV or 14th, and he was the fourth eldest son, expected to never sit on the throne, but the first two sons falling in battle and the third succumbing to a mysterious illness put rest to the notion. His intelligence is only poor-to-middling and his worldly experience is lacking to say the least, but his idealistic obsession with building what he calls a "worth-over-blood hierarchy" has made him rather difficult for the disparate noble clans to control. Moreover, as he's the only remaining universally-agreed-upon heir his assassination would cause a civil war that the empire couldn't afford in the face of the nomad hordes, and the feuding elements of the proto-aristocracy are hesitant to make an attempt to seat one of his cousins on the throne.
- He is pessimistic about the future, unsure whether he has what it takes to see his lofty ambitions through, and convinced that the instant the encroaching threat has been dealt with his head will roll. Before taking on the throne, he preoccupied his days attempting to chisel abstract geometric shapes out of stone slabs, half because the featureless steppe has led him to prize simplicity on a philosophical level and half because he isn't certain that his hands are worthy of representing the sapient form, be it mortal or divine. This took up enough time that he never bothered to marry and he didn't worry as he wasn't expected to, but now he refuses to wed any of the nobility for fear of allowing any one faction influence over the empire, and dread of the probable fate of any children upon his demise.
- Cidran doesn't hold any more than a token faith in the divinity of the Eternal Conqueror he's descended from and can't bring himself to accept myths of the (almost certainly true) supernatural without seeing them with his own eyes. Even so, he's desperate to have a higher power to rely on as he isn't sure he's capable of relying on himself to resist the machinations of the power-hungry conspirators within and the bloodthirsty raiders without for much longer. Being unwed and having little talent for violence, his reputation among the common people is low, worsened by the fact that his idea of "worth" corresponds to intellect and education rather than strength and martial prowess, something they've deemed hypocritical. His slender build comes far more from stress than blood, and you have no doubt that if it weren't for the religious connotations surrounding his position he would've been deposed long ago.
This is all intriguing and if nothing else, it's certainly more information to work with.
Before you go and examine the rising chieftain, what is your impression of the emperor?Mantles: Discovery
Epithets: N/A
Servitors: N/A
Champions: Urul, an Osterat prophet of supernatural cunning
Followers: 3 Units of Osterat
Your Godly Realm: A quiet place, ideal for contemplation and currently holding a handful of mortals who worshiped Eroth in life.
Osterat: Once home to an illustrious civilization, it has been destroyed by a god-sent cataclysm of an inconceivable scale.
Sibilum: An expanse of seemingly endless steppe-land, teetering on the brink of a catastrophic if primitive war.
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Topic: You are a Nascent Minor Deity (SG) (Read 8731 times)