The God-Emperor

The banner of the eighteenth God-Emperor Bu Shi, depicting the setting sun behind the Mountains of the Maiden-Made-Of-Light.

## House Information

### Region

Yi Ti

The God-Emperor is the ruler of the Golden Empire of Yi Ti, as well as the ruler of its mythic predecessor, the Great Empire of the Dawn. Only he may don the gowns of cloth-of-gold, green pearls, and jade that tradition allows the emperor to wear.

In recent centuries, the actual writ of the emperor extended no farther than the walls of his own capital. Before the reign of God-Emperor Bu Shi, the true power used to be held by the hundred princes, as well as the brigands, priest-kings, sorcerers, warlords, generals and tax collectors throughout the realm, but now many have been unified under a single banner.

## Appearance

It is forbidden for any to look upon the face of the God-Emperor of the Golden Empire, but the clothing worn by the ruler of Yi Ti is well-documented. In place of golden cloths, he wears a scaled-armour set made of the lustrous metal. His cloak is made of both gold thread and azure silk, and requires four servants to carry it as he walks.

Around his neck two pendants hang, the first is the traditional chain of green pearls, each said to be as large as a man's eye, the second of more peculiar design.

In the words of Lucias Longstrider, descendent of the famed Westerosi explorer Lomas Longstrider...

*"My eyes found themselves drawn to the pendant upon his chest, a flattened sphere of impossibly dark stone that seemed to melt and birl as it drank in the light reflected from the plate beneath it, in contrast to the string of green pearls which rested alongside it. Even in a palace filled with light streaming through a thousand stained glass windows, it somehow made me feel alone in the dark, and a sense of foreboding like all my worst fears had been simultaneously realised."*

## Recent History

For years, the Yi Tish have grown tired of the continuous threats presented to them by the tribesmen of the Jogos Nhai in the northern Hanlin Province, and Shadowmen to the west, whose attacks on the Gao-Jie Province promised constant threat to those living within its borders. They looked to their generals and local warlords for protection, not that of the seemingly indifferent God-Emperor upon the Throne of a Hundred Metals in the distant city of Yin.

The ascension of Bu Shi onto the throne in place of his father Bu Gai, who is said to have been cast down by his own son's hand, changed the fortunes of people. Almost overnight, attacks from the Shadowlands ceased, and the Gao-Jie Province was able to flourish in the time of peace that came as a result.

But the eighteenth azure God-Emperor was not satisfied with simply one border secured. Splitting the manpower of Cao-Yang, Gao-Jie and Yang-Tho Provinces into two great armies, the God-Emperor marches north personally, instructing his general Pol Qo to do the same. One force followed the border of the Great Sand Sea to the Howling Hills, the other to Nefer via the Five Forts and Bleeding Sea. Unified again at the peninsula near Leviathan Sound, his host marched south, slaughtering every tribesman, woman and child they found as they forced the Jogos Nhai further and further south, towards the northern Yi Tish border.

Their homes burned, crops torn from the dirt and crushed underfoot, the Jogos fled the only option presented to them by the hundreds of thousands that stabbed at their feet with spears and swords, threatening to do to them what had been suffered by their moonsingers and livestock alike.

They found the strength of the forces of the Hanlin Province waiting for them, and fell before them, pleading. By the time the God-Emperor returned to his capital of Yin, the bodies of over five million tribesman marked the northern border, for his mercy was not forthcoming. Four of the five Provinces of the Golden Empire now followed the guidance of the God-Emperor again, and he was ever stronger for it.

Less than a moon later, the Imperial General Pol Qo was found in bed with the wife of the God-Emperor himself, a scandal that was dealt with as much pace and brutally as shown to the Jogos Nhai in the northern plains. His wife was crushed beneath a great ball of jade. The pale-green sphere is mounted upon the crest of his throne, still streaks with dried bands of carmine.

Pol Qo was dismembered by four warhorses, but his wounds sown tight, so he might live on. Writhing and unable to escape, he was roasted alive, then fed to the wild dogs that roam the streets of the city in which he was born. It is said that his bones were collected, turned to ash, and the drunk in the form of a tea by the God-Emperor. There are those that have noted, privately, that in retrospect, the discovery simply played to Bu Shi's strengths. Having eliminated the only man powerful enough to challenge his authority, and his wife, he freed himself of rebellion and marriage, allowing him to strengthen his claim even further through a marriage with Yhatia the Grand, the God-Empress of Leng, further strengthening his army and his fleet.

Now that his strength has been further consolidated, his sight is said to have turned for those that have long claimed dominion over the Jade Sea, and the only threat he is yet to subjugate, the Qartheen.