Enohthree
Hypersane
Why exactly does Imperial Praxis appeal to you more than Royal aside from an unknown amount of the numbers being higher? We've not seen either used, we know not the difference if it's in capability, magnitude, or some other variable. No matter which option wins we'll also have already gotten a personal casting style as well, in addition to whatever super powers our extra remittances can net us.
Aside from the generalized fact that 'protecting your loved ones' is only as passive as you choose to make it (see: movies) I'd argue that as a character defining vote Vendetta goes way too far in the other direction.
The hero fought to protect the innocent people of this world. The Tyrant wasn't a bad guy because he was setting fire to wastelands, all this tragedy was happening because he was slaughtering good people who deserved to live.
When the Hero finally won, it was to adoring crowds who very much understood the peace they had been granted. All those innocent people loved him for saving their lives.
When the Hero was finally spurred to move again, it was to grant them the trappings of a better society that they could enjoy.
The betrayers killed the Hero because unopposed he could have done it! He had great respect from everyone, despite his obvious serious diminishment. He could have given those innocents he shielded a better life, and they would have been on board.
To make the in character choice of Decimator's affliction means that getting even with that betrayal, one done in order to prevent him from helping these common people, is worth seriously harming every single innocent person he defended. In one year he'll have killed a wide swath of the elderly and sick, slain by the curse the Hero chose to take on. And this is a 10% reduction in life span every year.
Assuming for simplicity's sake that 100 years is the average commoner lifespan, a high estimate give that this is a feudal society without strong institutions for the peasantry , then their new lifespan = 100*(.9^t) with t being how many years.
In six and a half years you'd have cut every innocent person in range's lifespan by half. In a decade a man who was in his mid twenties at the start of this, a peer to the age group of the hero perhaps, would be dead by old age.
And of course, whatever hidden master there is is going to be aggrieved but not dead because of that by dint of being stronger than a Combat type Cursebearer, so this would effect mainly innocents. Reaping the sick and doing irreparable harm to everyone else who the Hero thought was worth fighting for.
And that's not getting into the Apocryphal Curse. It's the in character decision that getting back at them for stopping the Hero from helping people is worth... raining down calamity upon the land he walks. Forever.
I don't believe it is, but imagine how insanely angry one would be as a bystander if the Tyrant's shattering of how the story was supposed to go or even the Betrayal could be traced to one guy setting up a speaker that yelled 'come at me universe! I need the powerboost!' every few years. It would be very very justifiable.
