With all the fuckery going on my first instinct was "oh no more witchcraft to manipulate us!"
We've also got the Whites, the current incumbent political block in the Senate. I can hazard a guess that there's a bunch of miscellaneous religious groups around too but we've not really made note of them.
There is nothing concerning about the man from the XVII Legion. He is merely here to be Bearer of the Word.
More seriously, I just remembered this. Xenophon thought it was a dig at him, but considering Ambrose states he wants to kill the Princeps, it brings up the possibility that he may empathise with "barbarians" for whatever reason.
I second this.
It's far from certain that guy is linked to anything tho. I really don't think he has anything to do with the situation at hand. He's a god of fertility and the hunt, and if he's a concurrent of Taal and Rhya he's a nature god. I really don't see what he would do imprisoned under a city, and so far there's nothing hinting that the god under the city is a nature one.
It is not certain he's linked to things, but it is very much not far from certain:
I wanted to just give a "just the visions" option with no edits at all, just in case if you didn't want to give any information Xenophon had beyond his dreams.
Shoot.
It should be noted that Xenophon has been in the city exactly two weeks. Despite him being the Raven, the League has a Senator (and a chief priest), a senatorial candidate, the (effective) head of a major union, and a warrior in the personal confidence of the Princeps. They have the ability to address the Senate themselves, and Xenophon is pretty sure in a he-said-she-said scenario he wouldn't come up on top.
It is currently -1780 IC. In Nehekara, that means Nagash is in his "reign of terror". He has invented the Elixir of Youth, and used it to rule Khemri for the past two hundred and twenty years, which is still full of very much living people. Arkhan is his lieutenant, and together, they are currently raising the Black Pyramid. Rumors come of dark magic and the raising of the dead. Nagash imports vast amounts of slaves, and in this actually has fairly good relations with Tylos-Kavzar, which is a major supplier. The Twin Cities also trade mass amounts of raw commodities and weaponry to support Nagash's eternal war effort against the other city-states of Nehekara, which are yet unsubjugated. In a great irony, the elite of those city-states which lose wars tend to flee to Tylos to Little Khemri, to the city that supplied the arms which defeated them. This has caused no little bit of resentment, and especially tension between them and the agents of Nagash in the city. Currently, Khemri has as vassal states Zandri, Numas and Quatar. Ka-Sabar and Bhagar were devastated in earlier wars, and are by treaty sworn to be neutral. Nagash is currently warring against Mahrak and Lybaras. Both sides are appealing to Lahmia to join them, though it has yet to choose a side. Armies of slave soliders and bound jinn fight necrosphinxes ridden by the twelve-priest lords of the City of Hope and the sky-ships and steam-scorpions of the City of Scholars. The Great Ritual has yet to come.
He did not. But the Pall would have been in the direction he was running in, he thinks.
This whole thing sounds like the setting of some spy novel sets in WW2. Noice
Son of a bitch gave us a direct hit with that bishounen sparkle. Surprised we weren't blinded.
Something Xenophon would know - Morr's black roses purportedly originate as cuttings of the blossoms from the Tree of Hope, that which lies beyond Morr's Realm.
In time immemorial, Tyleus was exiled by his people for a crime he did not commit. He came to where Tyleus and Kavzar now stand to make a home, slaying a great beast to do so. One day, three women came to his door. Between them they fought for a golden ball, emblazoned on it "to the Heart". They had heard of his hunt, and thought him a fit judge. One offered for his choosing her wisdom and knowledge, to have the meaure of every star and every flower and to always have the truth. Another offered forgiveness and peace; that no one would ever harm him, and the world would bend to keep his tranquility. The final woman - Myrmidia - offered him beauty. He chose her, and she married him, for she was the most gorgeous thing in all the world. His wedding gift was a spear, to promise to defend and all beauty till the end of days. Hers was a spring, to sustain him and his works in life everlasting. And so they were wed, under a canopy of roses, benath the twin-tailed glow of that golden orb.
Funnily enough, that's still not anything special by Nehekhara standards. Between the Covenant the Nehekharans had with their gods and the abilities of the Mortuary Cult, Nehekharans could live for a long time by human standards. Back then, being 100 years old was considered middle aged by the standards of Nehekharan peasants, the upper classes could live even longer(though how much of that was the Covenant and how much was simple access to Liche Priests is unknown). At least until Nagash broke the Covenant(though the Nehekharan still retained many of their old blessings*, at least to a degree before Nagash returned to kill them all and raise them as undead)).
Depends on the type of undead, how and where they were animated. Skeletal undead that were raised because of exposure to ambient dark magic tend to have their own spirits but those raised by Nagash's Necromancy** really are just constructs.
I would say that Nehekhara Divine Magic OP piz nerf, but Nagash kinda went and did that when he broke the Covenant. Still, before that happened, the humans of Tylos, Araby and anywhere else Nehekhara had contact with were probably jealous as hell over Nehkharan longevity and probably continued to be so even after the Covenant was broken.
Well shit, that's about as straightforward a metaphor as we're ever going to get. The dude who probably represents The Princeps is tempting people with false hope, getting them to struggle and bleed and climb over each other to reach the top, only to eat their souls once they actually get there. Almost cut and dry enough to make me wonder if there's something else I'm missing.
I reread the vision in the first chapter and got an idea about this line. I think it represents Melissa's husband, Junius. His final role was a soldier, in a play he wrote from Myrmidia's inspiration. And the image of a man addressing a skull? What does that remind you of? That's right, Hamlet. It's from theater.
