Anshumat

## Parentage

In the thirty year span since his departure from the alliance with Kalmar, Shengshi quickly realised he would need other allies after all - this led him to experiment with a similar project to the success that was Anu. However, the more the snake researched and tested, the more he began to realise that the circumstances around the accidental creation of Anu had been perfect - too perfect at that, and near impossible to recreate. For that reason, he put the project on ice while he delved deeper and deeper into his research on creation using all his knowledge on life and souls. Meanwhile, he ordered his servants to tend to the project, and while it grew in the background, the project slowly learned and observed the culture of the servile creatures that brought it sustenance. Then, one day, the snake burst in the door with his solution - a piece of his own essence mixed with the essence of the enemy, the barren rock and sand of the deserts. He would turn this creature into a weapon to fight the flames alongside Anu - a warrior without equal. However, as the snake bestowed the power upon the creature, his hopes did not come to pass: What he created was a creature which deemed its life mission to be the control and manipulation of hierarchies. It was without a doubt a result of servant influence. Day after day of listening to a people without a concept of social mobility drove the creature to explore the possibilities of such a system - how it could be formed, and how it could be broken. In true Shengshese rashness, the creature quickly disagreed with its creator’s primitive, strict understanding of hierarchy and instead soared off to learn - to understand.

## Persona

Anshumat is a mixture of a utilitarian and a moralist -- they are willing to commit atrocities in the name of preventing greater evils or bringing about good; but they are quick to second-guess themself and can easily come to regret actions they have taken. They hold on to impressions passionately, and can stubbornly hold onto a first impression of another person, despite any mounting evidence in the contrary.

They are quick to act and this is not always necessarily for the better. They are more than prone to committing mistakes that would have not been made if one had simply stopped and thought the situation through. They oscillate between too impulsive and too cautious, and find it difficult to find a happy medium between the two that is not entropic.

They are rather neutral: They hope for good, but their willingness to jump to harsh action precludes a pure description of good. They are also not evil, and any inflicted evil is unintentional or pursued as part of a greater goal.

## Portfolio

Anshumat is a demigod of hierarchy; the social bindings that men and civilizations abide by, governed not largely by the use of force, but the pressure of sociality. This portfolio represents the divine right of kings, the abiding of land ownership, or the social contract. Anshumat is inherently skilled at the creation and manipulation of such hierarchies, to either better or worsen the stability of a civilization.

An
 example of this would be entering a civilization and proselytising its major thinkers towards creating a warrior state, then letting those thinkers form such a state of their own will. It almost never includes physical dominance, the portfolio of hierarchy covering the social aspects of a society and how to manipulate those beliefs and those morals to produce the desired result.

The time this change takes to be fully enacted depends on the severity of the change; changing a society’s opinion on the color yellow would not take as long as upending a civilization’s core values. The power lies in ensuring that those seeds of reform, assuming no divine counteraction, will always take, whether in a year or a thousand years.