## Metadata Name: T Holding: [[Peacock Inferno]] Office: [[Governor]] ## Background You were born into [[Great Houses PAX 2023#House Tze|House Tze]], one of the galaxy's twelve [[Great Houses PAX 2023]]. Your family controls, conservatively, one in every thousand lives in the Celestial Empire. Not even the Imperial Bureaucracy has a lock on that number, but it's generally agreed that the galactic population is somewhere on the order of 10^24. If every person who owes allegiance to your house were to stand arm in arm, that line would stretch roughly one million light-years in length. That's a fun fact to trot out at parties, but it doesn't really mean much in terms of your day-to-day life. Materially, being born into a Great House means that you have lived a life of frankly absurd privilege. At birth, you were named Governor of [[Peacock Inferno|Legs of Stone]], a stellar-class warship which was once the flagship of a galaxy-spanning revolution. On your sixteenth birthday, you renamed it [[Peacock Inferno]] and had all of its weaponry shunted into space before filling it with ten planets' worth of designer drugs and all the friends money can buy. That was around five or six thousand years ago now, you're pretty sure, but time really flies when you're eating fist-sized blocks of hallucinogens. However long it's been, you've spent your life doing whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. There's apparently a famous story about you crashing one of Sage Iban's poetry festivals and unleashing a demon you somehow kidnapped from near the Leviathan's Corpse, though you have no memory of doing any of the things listed in that tale. Even if it didn't happen, it's certainly the kind of thing you might do. The death of the Plaguesmith happened while you were cruising a few light-days away. Normally, you avoid Myriadic Councils and similarly important events, because you can always trust someone else from your House to be present. Compared to the rest of the galaxy, you're one of the most powerful and influential people ever to live. Compared to your family, you're... well, a professional screw-up with a warship full of designer drugs. You don't resent that description. If nothing else, it's dead-on accurate. You do, however, resent the fact that your family tends to order you around. You figured out pretty early on that, as one of the family's most minor members, you can "serve the family's purposes" just by being as ridiculous as possible. After all, it's good for the House to be able to claim that even their screw-ups are *transcendental* in their screwed-up-ness. In this case, however, you've decided to attend for a simple reason. Just like the Empress and the Wend, most heads of the Great Houses are immortal. If someone has figured out how to put an end to even Her Majesty's hand-made immortality, then the stuff your House uses definitely won't hold up against it. You know for a fact that your House sent a representative to the Contemplatory, your cousin [[J Tze]]. The two of you have always gotten along well, so that's at least a bit of good news, but you believe they were sent because the head of your House is afraid. You want to find out how the Plaguesmith was killed because the idea of you, the family screw-up, killing the head of your House and taking their place is the funniest thing you've ever imagined. You're not doing it for any ideological reason. You've never done anything for an ideological reason. You're doing it because it would blow everyone away and give you one hell of a good laugh at their expense. There's just one, tiny problem. You haven't got the first clue how it might have been done. ## Mechanics ### **Asset: [[Dragon's Hoard]]** You are a member of one of the Great Houses. Thousands of worlds across the galaxy owe fealty to your house, with trillions of people living and dying at your whim. Even the least powerful members of such institutions can expect to live thousands of years, and to exercise such privilege as can hardly be described by those who've never experienced it. You have access to two pieces of Relic-class equipment. You may use this equipment yourself or give it away (or sell it, trade it, etc.). - [[Peacock Inferno]] is your pride and joy, a former warship turned into the galaxy's greatest pleasure yacht. Whether you're entertaining guests or just having supplies sent down via drop pod, any time this ship is involved in a [[Negotiation]], your side gains 3 advantages. - You've heard legends of [[Frission Ash]], the only drug ever crafted powerful enough to affect a Sapient Plague. You'd really like to do the drug yourself and find out if you'd survive, but if you enter a [[Combat|Combat]] against a Sapient Plague, you may expend this item to gain 5 advantages. ### Lien: [[Yoked to Tradition|Yoked to Tradition]] Great Houses don't bother with nonsense fantasies like "personal lives" or "individual identities." You exist to be a member of your House, and to serve that House's ambitions. While the high seat commands a great deal of power, not even they are above the dictates of the family at large. Your entire life is a balancing act, devoted to keeping as much of the family happy as possible without making anyone angry enough to be rid of you. Any time you have the opportunity to do something for the good of the house, regardless of the personal cost, you must do that thing. The only exception is when attempting a coup against another member of your own house, in which case you may inflict as much harm as necessary to secure your desired position. If you are publicly proven to have worked against your house's best interests, you will be summarily executed. ## Themes These themes are offered to help inform roleplay, but do not carry a mechanical effect. - Inherited Power and Nihilism - The Warping Effects of a Noble Upbringing - The Human Factor in Historical Events