"Empires always have the hubris to think they are indestructible, when in fact they are always unsustainable."
The Erudian Empire bestrides the world. For three centuries it has suborned the continent through conquest and subjugation. It has crushed rebellions and revolutionaries through the power of cruel suppression and military might. But now, having reached the natural limits of its expansion with no new conquests to loot or new resources to exploit, the Empire is waning. Its corruption, once negligible compared to the vast amounts of booty that its conquests brought into the treasury, now weigh heavier and heavier upon the imperial budget every year. The proletarii, once easily coopted with nationalistic zeal against one enemy or another, now question the empire's repressive class system and agitate for more rights. The provinces, once shattered and broken from their defeats, now lick their wounds and consider independence. These ills, left untreated, shall surely destroy this iron titan.
Yet the Erudian nobility seemingly have no intention of reversing their empire's decline. The high nobles are too glutted on their own wealth and too concerned with looting imperial institutions to their own benefit. Or worse yet, they have joined the reformists and seek to tear everything down that has facilitated the Erudian Empire's rise in favor of the downtrodden. The military and bureaucracy are filled to the brim with sinecures and bought men. The heroes that crushed Erudia's enemies and massacred its foes are all past and gone. Except for one.
General Arin au Elwood. A throwback to the conquering days of the Erudian Empire. Born to the ranks of the common folk, his rise is a legend in of itself. He is a true imperial loyalist, a rare sight in the modern age, and his followers are militarists and imperialists who seek to restore the Erudian Empire to its glory days of conquest and brutal subjugation. To those who have been crushed by the Empire, their nations wrought asunder and destroyed, the general is a terrible villain. To his followers he is a shining luminary who will restore the empire to glory. In people's minds he towers above, either as a demonic figure or a noble one.
But looking at him you would never suspect such a thing. Physically the general is quite a placid figure. Unassuming. Not poorly groomed but clearly dressed down for a man of his stature, with none of the pageantry that one would expect from an imperial hero. He can only drink tea after he has let it sit to cool for a few moments. He grooms his salt and pepper hair to a close military crop and puts his reading spectacles in his breastpocket. He walks with a cane after an an injury taken during his more active days as a field officer. And he is accompanied everywhere by his right hand, a young women rumored to have been a ward of his ever since a young age.
Those rumors are true. And that young woman is you.
Choose a origin
[] A street urchin. A gutter brat. You were picked up by the general at a young age from the street and he gave you everything. A home, a heart, a house. Your education is entirely thanks to the general. Your rank is entirely thanks to the general. Your skills are entirely thanks to the general. Your life is entirely thanks to the general. You will die for him. (Loyalty ∞+, Nobility Social Standing -, Desperation +, No background +/-)
[] A distant relative. Those who come from the ranks of the pleb and prole have little to rely on except for vast extended family networks and you came from one of them. As an extra mouth that your immediate family could not afford to feed, you were given unto the care of a distant relative, aka the General. You have seen the fortunes of your bloodline rise with him. You will die before you let them fall with him. (Loyalty ∞+, Blood Ties +/-)
[] The noble scion of a fallen house. The lesser nobles rise and fall with the tides as according to the Empire's social darwinist philosophy and are but pawns in the games of the high nobles. Your house fell and you saw your whole family put to the axe. But the general recognized the hate in your eyes for an asset and offered you hope. Your life is his to spend as he wills. You will die for him. (Loyalty ∞+, Powerful Enemies ---, The Power of Vengeance ++, Vestigial Ties +)
[] The converted captive. Of your people, you are the only one left. You only survived by a chance of fate. The General was only a junior officer when he picked you out from the ashes of everything you had known. Your feelings are a complex mess. The Empire killed your people, but you have nothing left to live for except the General. Despite the fact that you hate the institutions which he seeks to revive, you will die for him. (Loyalty ∞+/-. Proven Loyalty +, Lost Arts +, TRAITOR -)
Choose a specialty skill
[] Charm. Charisma. Whatever they choose to call it, you have it. You are a leader of men. You know how to bring fire to a crowd and to coerce an individual in a dark room. You can reassure, threaten, terrorize with great effectiveness. You can convince men to spend their lives for you. And that's the greatest power of all.
[] The arts. Not the soft arts of culture, no, the Empire has no need of such things in her military. You speak of the sorcerous arts. You are talented at both the sanctioned imperial magics and the unsanctioned witchcraft and can wield them to great effectiveness. Your hand can tap the very fabric of reality and remake it.
[] Personal prowess. You are a combat savant. You understand intuitively the way individuals will react, will act, will move, and from there you understand how to break them. You are a master of both ranged and melee weaponry and can pick up and kill with anything in contact with your limbs. You kill as easily as you breath.
[] Tactics. You are made in the same mold as the General, and that is your greatest pride. You are able to gaze upon a sight to see weakness and how to exploit it. Advantages and disadvantages are second nature to you. You have a second mind constantly working at how you can turn the latter into the former. You are a second General.
Choose a reputation defining trait
[] Ruthlessness. When the Seventh Army marched over the twelve hills of Akelstadt and crushed the Third Rebellion of the Hodlers, the General set you to secure his rear and protect the supply lines as his van dispersed across the forest hills. Faced with partisan attacks from the local villages your response was thus: Burn them. Burn them all. Your men destroyed the villages in your way and corralled the inhabitants into holding camps to keep better watch over them. Those who ran or resisted were cut down as rebels and traitors. The hodlers grew to hate you, but their hate mattered little for after the rebellion was crushed half were stripped of citizenship rights and the other half sent to hard labor. Through your brutal and decisive actions, you gained a reputation for ruthlessness and a willingness to do anything for the sake of Empire and General. (Dread++, Proven Loyalty+, Hate -)
[] Tenacity. During the subjugation of the Yohrdalites, at the Battle of the River Qahl, the General sent you to lead two regiments through an upstream ford in a diversionary attack. Where most commanders would have only gone so far as to skirmish and occupy the enemy's attention you threw yourself at their defenses with ferocity. After three repulsed attacks your forces succeeded in breaking through the other bank so that you could lead two cavalry companies to sweep through the Yohrdalite army's flank and take the head of the their commander. Your accomplish earned you many accolades and a reputation for persevering against fierce opposition, but also spending troops blood like small coin. The army never forgot that the river Qahl ran red with the blood of all the lives that you spent crossing the ford, traded for accolades and medals. (Acknowledgement++, Reliability++, Butcher General --)
[] Cunning. Rather than whet your edge on the battlefield, the General chose primarily to use you as a sharp blade to sharpen the edge of his other commanders. In that role you served mostly as the leader of the enemy contingent in training exercises. You performed in that role excellently, crushing the General's relied upon commanders in training exercises to sharpen their own skills at command. Yet, at the same time you earned a reputation for being arrogant yet untested. The victories you earned in training exercises sometimes relied more upon the rules of the exercises and you did not shy away from exploiting cheap trips and technicalities to score wins. Without any any real combat accolades to counter this, these incidents have tainted your reputation as someone who is only skillful in rules-constrained exercises. Otherwise known as someone who abides by the letter rather than the spirit. (Out of the box thinking++, Friendly Adversary+, Ally Familiarity+, Unblooded--)
[] Thrift. You managed the pursestrings and logistics of the General's armies. While this of course made you a critical figure that everyone had to earn favor with, it also earned you a reputation as a hardass. In order to be a good supplies officer there was no way that you could accede to everyone's requests and so invariably some people got the short end of the stick. The grudges stuck around as long as the fear did and somehow you have developed a reputation as a figure to be hated yet also must be pleased at the same time. Your accomplishments in the role of a logistics officer were many, yet not many were acknowledged for the work of the person managing supply lines is largely invisible to the officers at the front leading glorious charges of one kind or another. (A Figure to Be Feared +/-, The Account Books++, Underappreciated-, Equipment Expert+)
