THE ASHEN EMPEROR OF DUST AND DESPAIR
Deep in the gray sands of the Underworld of the South lies a stark black tower, constantly pouring out deep funnels of black cloying smoke. This Citadel is the Crematorium King’s Castle, the lair of the Ashen Emperor of Dust and Despair, a Deathlord seen amongst his fellows as oracular and powerful. He is an emaciated figure of black char and ash, a wasted away corpse burned to a veritable crisp. He can not speak; his lower jaw, tongue, and much of his insides, burned away completely. He sits, slumping in his dark soulsteel throne, a few equally burned tattered rags wrapping his figure, with eyes of piercing glowing red embers, and has barely moved in the centuries since his coming to the Shadowlands.
He does speak though, in a fashion. Attached to his chest with terribly heavy chains are four ghosts of small children, fastened by their necks with vicious looking bolts through their necks. When he is alone, they mill about, fighting with each other, crying, sleeping, doing things four sad little ghost children would do when left to their own devices, chained to an unmoving, uncaring Deathlord. It is through these children that the Ashen Emperor of Dust and Despair channels his voice, his will, and his Virtues.
The first child is a boy who represents the Valor of the Crematorium King. He always looks beaten and bloodied, his lip cut, his eyes blackened, nursing never healing wounds, but with defiant eyes saying that despite his painful state, he would not back down. This boy was beaten to death by his drunken father, born of cruelty it is all he knows. Whenever the Emperor speaks of war, of torture, or when he is angry, it is through this impotently angry little boy, yelling childish threats and names and gloriously describing the pain and harm his servants should inflict with a sick child’s glee.
The second one is the youngest, about four summers of age. She has dark hair, neatly braided, but left to tangle and gather dirt for decades. She keeps a headless rag doll with her at all times. She died during the Contagion, even though she was one of the rare children immune to the disease. But she was the only one among her whole village. For weeks she stayed by her dead mother's side, trying to wake her up, shaking her, trying to find food in the house. She represents the Emperor's Compassion, and she is usually always crying and caring to her doll as if it had lost it's mother just like her. When he is sad, merciful, or simply trying to be non-threatening (which should be noted is always a ruse), he speaks through her. Her throat, sore from constant crying, always sobbing and sniffing, is a calm respite from his wrath.
The third child is the tallest, and the oldest, a noble-looking girl of 13 years of age. She has long, straight black hair, and her head and nose drips black blood. Her eyes are wild, one lazy and badly unfocused, and her mouth sags at one side. She was a Shogunate princess, loved and doted upon to her every whim by her parents. She was spoiled rotten, and would never take no for an answer, and such was her death. Denied something she longed for, she threw a tantrum that lasted two days, until an aneurysm in her brain caused her instant and sudden death. She represents the Emperor's Conviction, and when he refuses to give up, or when interrogating, or when commanding someone to do something, she speaks for him. As such, he uses this ghost a lot, and her strong but malicious voice has worn on most his servants.
The last is a very quite little boy in a brown burlap robe who keeps close to the Emperor if he can. He was a young Immaculate alter boy in a far flung Threshold temple, and the daily stresses of managing the conversion of barbarians drove the three monks who watched him to let out their tension with the loyal altar boy. He was abused badly, in ways clearly not approved of in the Immaculate Texts, until one monk began to try deeply sinful sexual experiments on the boy. Finding himself not stricken down instantly by his sin, the monk told his fellows, and convinced them, equally maddened by the Wyld, to try their hand at the poor boy that was taught to keep his mouth shut about what they did with him in the dark of night. He died in silence, choking to death on rather unpleasant juices. He speaks for the Emperor's Temperance and when he needs to put a leash on his excesses, even his other more violent Virtue-Children, or those of his deathknights, the silent lad speaks up with a wavering voice and a tear in his eye.
Due to his many-faceted nature, the Emperor, though disturbing, is considered a wise and enlightened Deathlord, and many Ghosts and Abyssals come to his court and Shadowland to emplore his advice, deliberated between his four portions of his mind and soul as represented through his children. Rarely do these internal arguments become violent, but the angry Valor and the oppressive Conviction have been known to throttle the others, or each other, if they violently disagree. When this gets out of hand, the Emperor breaks his stillness again, yanking violently on one of the chains to show which side he sides with. The children are independent entities who represent different lines of thought, different philosophies that the Ashen Emperor considers, and their external debate represent his inner deliberation over his differing opinions on any topic.
In the few recorded times his anger has brought him to slay someone personally, the children have, with but the simplest squinting of their Emperor’s eyes, moliated into mighty war-ghosts and shredded anyone within reach of their chains. None have survived the onslaught of the four monster-ghosts, but when the deed is done, and the children revert, the unwelcome sobbing of the Compassion-child and the Temperance-child, and the angry yelling and bullying of the other two fill the room with more noise then their victim ever had time to let out. |
