Saving the world on a Sunday afternoon
Emperor Ozzimandias, the first of his name comes from a line of thirteen generations of Emperors and is perhaps the most peaceful of that line. Due to his fair and balanced views between companies, allies and enemies alike The Hassani Lands are at their most prosperous to date.
As a child, The Emperor was bookish and spent most of his time in the vast libraries learning about anything and everything he could get his hands on. It is said he could speak and write in every known language and rune set and had an excellent grasp on the world around him and the known civilisations. He was often seen empathising with everyone and it is possibly this trait that enabled Ozzimandias to become such an excellent Emperor.
As the Emperor grew older his interests shifted towards warfare and weaponry. He trained extensively with the spear and became a master. On his 20th Birthday he was given a rather beautifully crafted weapon which he never parted with.
With his new found skill, the young prince often left the palace to find battles to fight. Amongst the most famous ones are his epic battle with a dire scorpion sent by Set himself which he defeated by the skin of his teeth, the King of the Caverns who was terrorising those who were trying to get water from the river and his one on many battle with the berserking northman. It was during the battle with the King of the Caverns that the young Ozzimandias met his first wife, Ymunet who he married a few months later and kept by his side from then on.
When the young prince wasn’t out fighting, he could be seen at the race course watching the chariot races. An Avid fan, the prince even competed himself once or twice when the Emperor, his father allowed it. In his older age he is content to watch and bet.
At his father’s deathbed, unrest started to form within the empire. Followers of Set were gathering and as a result, Famine and drought started to take over the land. With the previous Emperor too sick to do anything and Ozzimandias had not yet taken his place on the throne the people of Set were allowed to spread.
By the time Emperor Ozzimandias took his place as ruler the land had become a land of chaos and death. Having had plenty of time to come up with a strategy, The emperor made his way to the centre of the city where he gathered the crowd and ordered them to stop.
Next he used his military and maji to call upon the spirits themselves to help drive those who followed Set out of the towns,villages and cities and achieved peace once more. With those people driven to the desert, life within the Empire returned to its prosperous self again.
As a gesture of goodwill to those who left for the deserts, Ozzimandias took on his second wife Massika, who was said to be unruly and was eventually executed after several assassination attempts made on The Emperor and his first wife, Ymunet.
During the peaceful moments that followed the generals and council turned their gaze upon the royal household who had yet to be graced with a child. Ozzimandias was pressured into marrying yet again to his cousin’s widow, Nubia, who had a daughter of her own and was therefore proven to bare children.
Marriage to Nubia brought favour from Isis and Bastet as months later, Ymunet gave birth to twin Sons Zosar and Abraxis and not long after Nubia gave birth to the daughter, Safiya. With an heir established in the form of Abraxis, the council once more turned their attention outwards to the Empire.
The Empire had become so prosperous that the population began to climb and with it new problems arose. There were not enough workers to build what needed to be done and not enough guards to enforce the emperor’s laws. Thankfully with the Emperor’s extensive knowledge of communing with the planear spirits, a solution was found. The Emperor gathered all the Magi and together they created an army of bound planear spirits who did the jobs of several slaves each.
Emperor Ozzimandias did away with slavery all together at this point and instead encouraged people to rely on the bound spirits. Humanoid lives became more sacred and slavery towards another person became unlawful. Many generals did not agree with the use of planear spirits but Ozzimandias’s word was final and so they learned to live with it. The Eagles and Rhinos in particular took offense to the new regime but simply took their people closer to the borders where they made as little use of spirits as possible. It worked though, The Hassani Lands have never been greater! We are a people with nothing to want for and all that can be credited to the Emperor.
The Sanguists threatened that though. The Sanguists were a cult that have always been around but never gained ground enough to become a threat. It’s unsure how they gained popularity but many blamed the fantastical arrival of the immortal bound spirits and the perfect empire no one wanted to leave.
The sanguists themselves, believe in drinking the blood of elves to gain their immortality. They started with those whose lineage shared both our blood and that of the hill elves then moved on to capturing our allies to perform their wicked rituals.
What came out of those rituals were creatures that were neither living nor dead and fed on all.
Emperor Ozzimandias ordered these Sanguists to be gathered up and brought to the death temples where they were laid to rest with books of the dead but they never went willingly. Many died in their pursuit of sanguist hunting, families often wanted to keep their abomination family members and the empire took on the darkest point in its history.
Rumours say that the reason Ozzimandias was so lenient on the Sanguists was because his own son, Zosar had become one of them but there are no records to support or reject this rumour. Ozzimandias simply felt no soul deserved eternal oblivion.
In any case, the event took its toll on the empire and it permanently damaged relations with the elves. Cracks began to form within the generals of the Hassani companies and because the Magus were often the first people to deal with the Sanguists their number declined significantly.
With Emperor Ozzimandias’s death upon the horizon it will be interesting to see what Abraxis will do next.