Hm.
So... Are we going to visit the General and the Sorcerer-lord this/next month too?
Yi Ti is in shit condition, and it falling to anyone would be bad...
But honestly, I can't give less of a fuck about them for now.
Maybe in a year* I will.
Right now, all I'm interested in is eradicating Golden Company, and I have a feeling we need all 3 Emperor-candidates cooperating for that to go well enough.
With General we probably won't have much trouble convincing him that GC has to go - and we'll either have to murderblender or come to terms with the Sorcerer anyway -
But what kinda has me worried is the intrigue-esque act of jumping around these 3, without aggravating any of them too much at the same time.
That's going to be quite tricky - we'll likely have to set ourselves as a completely unrelated third side to any of their conflicts - probably citing "so long as you fight threats I fight I'll work with any of you three" and "just keep trading with me, profits run this world" as reasoning..?
*approximate time to deal with Westeros and consolidate our forces, finish off Brazen Throne and Illithids
That makes us seem a bit too mercenary for any one of the three to really want to deal with.
See, the thing is, Pol Qo has to consider that the other two have stronger legitimacy than him. One's a Sorcerer Lord and even if anyone wanted to dispute his claim as the Yellow Emperor and thus a rightful Claimant to the title "Son of Heaven", there's not many people who will argue the point when he comes for what he considers his, same situation with Viserys, not many people could make a strong argument against him being Azor Ahai for example, their only recourse would be to burn it all to the fucking ground and hope there's less Viserys hanging around afterwards than there are ashes.
Bu Gai can't deal with someone that doesn't completely recognize his own legitimacy because it's tenuous enough as it is outside of his direct sphere of influence, and furthermore technically speaking he holds the title, thus while for practical purposes he does not actually leverage or command most of his Golden Empire, he is still Emperor. Anything less than complete disavowal of any pretenders is beneath his consideration. He doesn't lack a spine, he's not going to take three steps forward and then thirty backwards when he had to scratch, scrabble and claw his way to that third step alone. You think Viserys had a rough time coming up?
Bu Gai isn't a 9th Circle mage with vast armies at his beck and call and enemies who consider it suicide to provoke him too much too quickly. He's probably had multiple assassination attempts against our what, less than a handful of incidences, most of them actually impromptu and completely unplanned because no one has been crazy enough to consider it seriously? Most people don't even know where Viserys will
be at any time of day, how can you arrange an assassination like that? Even the Faceless Men couldn't do that ninja shit casually, they would actually have to threaten something we care about to draw us out, and there's no real way to hide a trap from us, not when you can hear a fly from three hallways down or see a shadow slipping across the ceiling in twilight hour. His only leverage is all ceremonial, political,
theater. People believe he's Emperor--and it wasn't easy to sell it, either, as an untried boy. Viserys doesn't even bother peddling it, he just
lives in it. We don't have to fake it, basically, Bu Gai has yet to
make it.
And as for Hastur's Ghost over there? He's done waiting for his turn.
