Xochi, High Shogun of Heavenly Franchises
Deity of the Fifth Rank
Bureau of Heaven
Xochi is a god of nothing within Creation. That is just how he likes it. One could annihilate Creation and his portfolio would continue to exist. Indeed, he was the one who invented his domain almost scratch within Heaven; he was certainly the first to formalise it. His greed and cunning ambition was what led him to turn a simple job into his current position as one of Ryzala's most loyal cronies, producing fortunes from the poor of Yu Shan. Xochi is a gloriously fat eagle-headed man, with feathers the rich brown of chocolate and six hundred hands which fan out behind him, welling with quinessence and ambrosia. His robes are lavish silk woven by spider-gods, and he clatters as he walks from the golden bracelets which ring every arm. His department spreads over all of Heaven, and by some reckonings he is the third largest employer within Yu Shan, with more gods reporting to him than the Bureau of Seasons.
The combined impact of the Great Contagion and the Balorian Crusade devastated the economy of Heaven. The fall in prayers led to a decline that the gods have still not recovered from. While once Yu Shan was a metropolis where a single house could cost more than entire mortal nations, now vast swathes lie abandoned and cut off from the city's utilities. Unemployment and underemployment is rife, and mad gods gone too long without a role roam burned out slums, living off a scraping of the dole and what they can manage to pick up with ad-hoc work. Gods are not like men; a man can survive without a job and as long as he has food and water and housing he may even find the experience to be liberating. Gods lose their minds if they have no position, for they were made by the titans to watch over Creation and a god without a purpose is useless.
In the early years of the Realm, Xochi, God of the Aotal Breed of Cocoa Beans in the Bureau of Nature, found that his beans had been wiped out in their entirety by the fae. Through some creative accountancy he managed to hold onto his job for a decade, but as the austere cuts of the auditors of Heaven winnowed through the Bureaus firing everyone that they felt they could downsize, the chopping axe got ever closer.
And then he had an idea. It took all the favours he had ever earned and no small amount of grovelling, but he managed to secure a transfer to the Bureau of Heaven and - through more grovelling and the attentions of a auditor-general with a thing for South Easterners - he managed to arrange to be on a travelling boat with Ryzala. Risking life and limb, he approached the Shogun of Paperwork and managed over the course of the boat trip to persuade her that a God of Cocoa Drinks Served In Heaven would be a good way for the Bureau of Heaven to take influence away from the Bureaus of Humanity and Nature by cutting away at their power bases.
The position came with no pay and a desk in a shared office, but Xochi didn't care. He didn't spend any time at his desk, because every day he was out in the city selling drinks from his cart. He didn't need pay from Heaven - not when gods would pay him to avoid the inconvenience of having to walk too far. This was far from unheard of, of course, because many gods had taken up careers like that trying to make ends meet. But it was different for Xochi - the more of a market he built up, the more powerful his position became. And that's when the next radical step happened; he hired unemployed gods as unpaid deputies and made them Gods of Selling Cocoa Drinks in specific plazas, or on certain streets. Every one he hired not only meant they were paying him a share of their wages, but they were making his office more important. And unemployed gods were so desperate! They'd work for almost nothing and he could fire any who became a threat.
Within fifty years, this practice of franchising had caught in within Heaven. Other gods started getting in on the action, but Xochi had tied himself to Ryzala and the Bureau of Heaven's coattails and she appreciated his loyalty. The new God of Heavenly Franchising had jurisdiction over everyone else trying to do the same thing, and he kept on doing what he had done; franchising off the rights to fields of Heaven's service economy to other gods, who got the right to make further franchises within their field. Yu Shan's service sector is a great pyramid, and the wealth flows uphill to Xochi - with generous payments to Ryzala, of course. Her patronage is key to his success, and he knows which side his bread is buttered.
Xochi has no interest in power in Creation - nor in running Yu Shan. He makes his prodigious fortune from the poor and lower-middle class of gods. The upper classes have their own servants and chefs and seldom need his services. His lesser director-generals are also wealthy in their own right - though nowhere as wealthy as him - but as one heads down the pyramid incomes drop precipitously. The Department of Heavenly Franchising is kept under Xochi's iron thumb and director-generals who fail to meet the expected income for each season find that their positions are at risk. He is hated by many of the poor gods, but even more want to work for him all in the hope that they'll achieve what he has. Fools, he would tell them if he spoke the truth. He found a gap in Heaven, and he filled it. There's no room at the top.
