RE: Court Of Stones
10-10-2019, 03:14 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-10-2019, 04:19 AM by Demonsul.)
Name: Varamelius Setgar
Species: Sandrali are humanoids, with skin that runs a variety of shades from blue to green to grey, and feathery-textured clouds of voluminous puffy hair in even more colours. Fairly unexciting as species go, they are known for their keen senses and swift movements, as well as their odd predisposition towards sleeping standing upright, which other species find creepy.
Varamelius Setgar is short for a Sandrali, at only about five feet tall, and he is also very fat. His rotundness is the butt of a few jokes, and he has been known to join in the laughter when such jokes are told, which honestly takes most of the fun out of them. His skin is pale grey, and he is completely hairless. He wears formal court suits that are fitted to his form, usually sticking to the dark blue hues of the Commissariat but bringing out something more colourful on lavish occasions.
Title: Lord Justiciar of the Spiritual Fortification Security Commissariat (SFSC)
Your Office: His private office as the Chief of the SFSC is small and modestly appointed, with antique wooden furniture and a large bookcase. The walls are polished stone, and carry a few large masterwork paintings. He has bugged the place to hell and back with a variety of enchantments, of course, which he can enable or disable with secret desk-tap rhythms or clandestine command words. The main entrance is a lavish wooden double door, which leads out to the palace corridors, and is always flanked by two Commissariat guards. There is a hidden door behind a painting of the Emperor, which facilitates easy access down a winding stair into the SFSC headquarters, as well as to a personal escape tunnel that he'll probably never use.
The SFSC headquarters is in the lower levels of the palace, and has a number of surveillance monitoring stations and interrogation rooms, as well as facilities for the staff that fully separate them from the rest of the castle servants. From there, stairs lead down further to both the SFSC's private courtroom (they don't use the Emperor's Court for something as base as passing judgment on Commissariat captives) or to its lightless holding cells. It is basically a tiny palace unto itself, which Setgar wields as his personal fiefdom.
Short history and description: Setgar has a friendly, jovial attitude, always smiling and laughing and getting along well with everyone. He's a spellcaster, specializing in divination magic, seeing visions of things from afar and reading surface thoughts as a party trick. He was never nearly as powerful as the Emperor, but he claims that he was taught a few tricks by him. He became a stone lord long ago, having been personally chosen by the Emperor for reasons unknown. He was blessed with resilience like iron - it is said that if anyone managed to cut him, he would bleed cinders - and an equally iron-hard will. He swore to safeguard the Empire against secession and corruption, maintaining the purity of the people's spirit and their loyalty to the Emperor.
He did this by creating the Spiritual Fortification Security Commissariat, the Emperor's secret police apparatus. Their role is to watch others for disloyalty, keeping tabs on the entire empire for dissent, and using judicious use of extensive magical surveillance to keep the people in line, as well as encouraging and rewarding those who would turn in traitors among their neighbours, friends and families. When needed, Setgar employs raids, kidnappings, forced confessions, reeducation and extrajudicial executions to ensure the Emperor's rule goes unchallenged (and to deal with anyone the Emperor wanted dealt with). Among those who understand the full power of the Commissariat, he may well be the most feared man in the Empire after the Emperor himself, and the least loved bar none. The Lords of Stone know him to be a heartless, calculating monster. Still, in spite of this, he goes on smiling and laughing, treating everyone like a friend.
Are you brave enough to openly nominate yourself for the position of Stone Regent? Yes, of course. Who else is more qualified to keep everything stable until the Emperor returns? After all, everyone knows who really runs things around here...
And lastly: It is said - heresy and blasphemy, I know, and don't let the Commissariat hear you say it - that the Emperor did not always rule. His ascent, told in the oldest histories, was a thing that brought storms and earthquakes across the whole region that would become his empire. He was once a man, of a species since lost to time, but he reforged himself into a form of flawless and unbreakable white marble. Even then, it took centuries for him to take the Empire. And it is said, as his reign had a beginning, so too would it have an end. It was prophecized, even. And the search for that prophecy, to seek to find it and understand it so he could thwart it, consumed him in his latter centuries. Some would say it drove him to the brink of madness, pushing him into ever greater acts of tyranny at the slightest hint that it could have been found. Some say it's even the reason he went east to the islands.
But that's all blasphemy, of course.
Species: Sandrali are humanoids, with skin that runs a variety of shades from blue to green to grey, and feathery-textured clouds of voluminous puffy hair in even more colours. Fairly unexciting as species go, they are known for their keen senses and swift movements, as well as their odd predisposition towards sleeping standing upright, which other species find creepy.
Varamelius Setgar is short for a Sandrali, at only about five feet tall, and he is also very fat. His rotundness is the butt of a few jokes, and he has been known to join in the laughter when such jokes are told, which honestly takes most of the fun out of them. His skin is pale grey, and he is completely hairless. He wears formal court suits that are fitted to his form, usually sticking to the dark blue hues of the Commissariat but bringing out something more colourful on lavish occasions.
Title: Lord Justiciar of the Spiritual Fortification Security Commissariat (SFSC)
Your Office: His private office as the Chief of the SFSC is small and modestly appointed, with antique wooden furniture and a large bookcase. The walls are polished stone, and carry a few large masterwork paintings. He has bugged the place to hell and back with a variety of enchantments, of course, which he can enable or disable with secret desk-tap rhythms or clandestine command words. The main entrance is a lavish wooden double door, which leads out to the palace corridors, and is always flanked by two Commissariat guards. There is a hidden door behind a painting of the Emperor, which facilitates easy access down a winding stair into the SFSC headquarters, as well as to a personal escape tunnel that he'll probably never use.
The SFSC headquarters is in the lower levels of the palace, and has a number of surveillance monitoring stations and interrogation rooms, as well as facilities for the staff that fully separate them from the rest of the castle servants. From there, stairs lead down further to both the SFSC's private courtroom (they don't use the Emperor's Court for something as base as passing judgment on Commissariat captives) or to its lightless holding cells. It is basically a tiny palace unto itself, which Setgar wields as his personal fiefdom.
Short history and description: Setgar has a friendly, jovial attitude, always smiling and laughing and getting along well with everyone. He's a spellcaster, specializing in divination magic, seeing visions of things from afar and reading surface thoughts as a party trick. He was never nearly as powerful as the Emperor, but he claims that he was taught a few tricks by him. He became a stone lord long ago, having been personally chosen by the Emperor for reasons unknown. He was blessed with resilience like iron - it is said that if anyone managed to cut him, he would bleed cinders - and an equally iron-hard will. He swore to safeguard the Empire against secession and corruption, maintaining the purity of the people's spirit and their loyalty to the Emperor.
He did this by creating the Spiritual Fortification Security Commissariat, the Emperor's secret police apparatus. Their role is to watch others for disloyalty, keeping tabs on the entire empire for dissent, and using judicious use of extensive magical surveillance to keep the people in line, as well as encouraging and rewarding those who would turn in traitors among their neighbours, friends and families. When needed, Setgar employs raids, kidnappings, forced confessions, reeducation and extrajudicial executions to ensure the Emperor's rule goes unchallenged (and to deal with anyone the Emperor wanted dealt with). Among those who understand the full power of the Commissariat, he may well be the most feared man in the Empire after the Emperor himself, and the least loved bar none. The Lords of Stone know him to be a heartless, calculating monster. Still, in spite of this, he goes on smiling and laughing, treating everyone like a friend.
Are you brave enough to openly nominate yourself for the position of Stone Regent? Yes, of course. Who else is more qualified to keep everything stable until the Emperor returns? After all, everyone knows who really runs things around here...
And lastly: It is said - heresy and blasphemy, I know, and don't let the Commissariat hear you say it - that the Emperor did not always rule. His ascent, told in the oldest histories, was a thing that brought storms and earthquakes across the whole region that would become his empire. He was once a man, of a species since lost to time, but he reforged himself into a form of flawless and unbreakable white marble. Even then, it took centuries for him to take the Empire. And it is said, as his reign had a beginning, so too would it have an end. It was prophecized, even. And the search for that prophecy, to seek to find it and understand it so he could thwart it, consumed him in his latter centuries. Some would say it drove him to the brink of madness, pushing him into ever greater acts of tyranny at the slightest hint that it could have been found. Some say it's even the reason he went east to the islands.
But that's all blasphemy, of course.