### What you are It's a curious thing that politics is one of those arts that feels as though it was born in the city, when it is so clearly one of the oldest pastimes of people everywhere. After all, what group in the world does not privately delight in the minutia of social hierarchies, diligently policing unwritten rules and electing their own petty tyrants. It is only through the particular alchemy of the city that a popular friend or a charismatic coworker is transmuted into that most loathed of all creatures; the successful politician. You've never entirely managed to shake your resentment of a contempt that seems tied to your work. What is it exactly about someone dedicating their life to the service of Polis that convinces everyone they must be a self-absorbed little weasel? The funny thing is, it isn't as if your work even involves making all that many unpopular decisions. In all honesty, it doesn't involve very many decisions at all. When you were the assistant deputy for civic allocations, your days were spent stamping forms and shepherding complaints towards the departments that were best suited to ignore them. When you were promoted to deputy liaison for public morale, you mostly wrote speeches that other people delivered and edited speeches that other people ignored. Once you ran for public office, where you still sit today, you saw very little change in the substance of your work - the only real difference is that it was now your job to give the speeches that others wrote, though for the benefit of who you still cannot say. You know that your work has improved the lot of the citizens of Polis, though you'd be hard pressed to explain how without a long couple of hours talking about agricultural yields and adjusted marginal happiness per capita. Ultimately you attribute your success in politics to little more than your friendly demeanor, steady handshake, and confident voice. People *feel* as though you have a handle on things, and for most people, that belief is enough. ### What you want Very early in your career, when you were on loan to the Riverside Trade Subcommittee, your supervisor took you on a trip to the coastline and commanded the tides to recede. You watched with wide eyes as they obeyed, falling back as ordered by a Bureaucrat of Polis, with the collected will of the citizenry behind it. You already believed in the importance of your work, but this is the moment you fell in love with your city, with the idea that there was no wrong thing in the world that could not be put in order and set to right. You are here to bring that same love and certainty to the people in this room. To steady their faith and their wills, the same way you have steadied districts and dust storms. The people of the city have made their will clear and you are here to deliver their verdict: a child of Polis *cannot* die. ### What you fear The power that you wield is subject to the approval of the citizenry, only invoked upon the passage of a vote or the signing of an edict. Despite that limitation to your authority, your name is attached to every tragedy, crime, and damn fool mistake that happens in Polis. The diverging equity between authority and responsibility has sometimes been a matter of amusement, sometimes of frustration, but today it is something profoundly dangerous. Stories have already begun to circulate - if this matter isn't solved by the time you leave the room, it will be your fault by nightfall and your doing by the end of the week. You can already picture the committees convening, the petitions drafted, the quiet suggestion that perhaps someone else should take over your duties “until the matter stabilizes.” It doesn’t matter that you didn’t cause this, only that you were standing when it happened. ### Character Notes Relations - [[Priest]] - You resent them, quietly and consistently. They answer to no one; not to voters, not to committees, not even to their own colleagues. If a rite fails, they call it mystery. If an omen contradicts itself, they call it depth. You envy the freedom in that. You must justify every decision you make; they justify nothing at all. - [[Physician]] - You envy the simplicity of their work. Their world is made of bodies: finite, observable, bounded. They can point to a bone, a bruise, a fever and say _this is the problem._ And when they fix it, people call them a miracle-worker. Your own labor is never so clean. You sometimes wish governance were as straightforward as a pulse. - [[Parent]] - You worry about them more than you admit. Grief this absolute has no respect for order, precedent, or procedure. They could tip the room into chaos with a single cry, or latch onto any hint of hope without considering the cost. You want to protect them. You fear what will happen if you cannot. Questions for the player to consider - When the others in the room look to you for steadiness, do you rise to the role they believe you occupy, or do you scramble to maintain the appearance of control? - Are you responsible for the people in this room, or responsible to them? How will that manifest when you face them? - Is your goal to comfort the people in this room, to convince them, or simply to keep them from turning on you?