Divine Emperor TanTan

Divine Emperor TanTan was Kuban Head-of-State, one of the Kuban founders, and owner of Free Derry.

## TanTan

### Affiliation

KGB (Formerly), Divine Hyperstate of Kuba (Formerly), Half-Brain Unity Party (Up to his death)

## Biographical information

### Date of birth

6/13/???? (Officially stated date of birth. Refused to give actual year, but is one of the Kuban founders.)

## Physical description

### Golden-Era Kuba

While little is known about the former Divine Emperor TanTan's early life, his role in proto-Kuba is well-documented (though minor). He participated in the growing platform race, agreeing to halt his expansion in exchange for autonomous status for his land in fledgling Kuba, an exchange that would put him in a unique position as Kuba expanded.

### Role in the Troubles

TanTan played little role in the troubles, largely sequestering himself in Free Derry and occasionally embarking on journeys to recover ancient and powerful artifacts. It is suspected that TanTan became an active member of the KGB during the Troubles. His role in the KGB was largely considered controversial on account of his Goblin heritage.

### Era of the Second Cube

Following the creation of the second cube using the Foreskin of Saint Gekyume and its subsequent split into five fragments, he set out again from the cube to reunite the Foreskin and claim its power for his own. Following his return with the completed foreskin, he, with the assistance of Gobbie Gobinov and the KGB overthrew the Theocommunist Worker's Party of Kuba and instated his own Half-Brain Unity Party.

### Exile

While the reign of the Half-Brain Unity Party was largely peaceful, internal forces moved against it. Egg and Pwucachu Germilon carried out a peaceful coup d'état, after which former Divine Emperor TanTan went into self-imposed exile. His exile has continued to this day.

### Death

While the INGSOC Party was able to keep tabs on the former emperor, their contacts were lost following the invasion of the Jebbic Empire, which has been unable to keep track of his whereabouts or activities. For this reason, it is suspected that he has died.

[TanTan, whose role as the Violet King has since confirmed by the NKVD, is dead, slain by an NKVD strike force.]

## The Violet King

TanTan and the Violet King share circumstantial ties. The following is a journal written by TanTan, the content of which is not known to the public or to the Kuban government.

I don’t know the date, but my heart races. I was in my study, deep in my keep in the lower Kube. The artifact was whispering to me, whispering, that damned, incessant whispering, and I as usual I could not decipher the words. I wrote down the sounds, as usual. I tried desperately to translate, as usual.

For the first time, though, I understood. It’s inexplicable. I hear my comrades in the government. Hushed whispers. A coup. The artifact relayed this to me. A warning, perhaps? I will proceed with caution.

Day 1 since exile (S.E.):

Damnable traitors! I should have heeded the artifact. I was a gentle king! A kind monarch! It doesn’t matter. There is no greater vice, I suppose, than cruelty and power. My once-comrades will disseminate the idea that this exile is self-imposed; it is not. I told them I would go quietly into the night; I will not.

Day 70 S.E.:

Soviet Authorities did not take kindly to my arrival. It appears that the disinformation campaign of the current Kuban authorities was more effective than I anticipated, and I was chased out as a foreign spy as soon as I arrived. I escaped only through use of the artifact, whose whispers have grown ever louder.

Day 111 S.E.:

I have been in the woods for some time now. Evading the Soviets has been an unending struggle. Even when I can escape the barking of the dogs, the artifact warns me of their approach. My health is failing. My skin is taut and scaly, and my ribs hang far over my abdomen. My hands… I do not know how the tendons and ligaments still have the strength to pull my fingers. Sores, once minor, have grown necrotic and split open. If I do not find some refuge, some care, some revitalization… I fear my end is upon me. I take solace knowing only that I am close to the Soviet border.

Day 113 S.E.:

I stand in the shadow of the Kube. I rode the railway as long as I could after escaping the Soviet Union, disembarking near Serbia and Bosnia. The stench of chemical waste and human decay hit me long before I could even see the wall. I am going to draw on the power of my keep, marked with wards that have surely captured the souls of Kuba’s lost and damned. Yes, I feel it now; desperation, hunger, fear, excitement, greed. In my absence, many, many misguided souls tried to claim my stores of food, my riches. They failed. I am taking their essence; claiming their vitality for my own. Then I will move onto the Holy Land; I am compelled to do so by the artifact.

Day 115 S.E.:

I have arrived in Jerusalem. The whispers have become words; what was once hushed and incomprehensible has become speech as plain as day. I’ll listen to it, for now. I will take the corpse of X from its tomb, as it tells me.

Day 117 S.E.: The artifact has laid itself bare to me at last. I see its nature, its power. Its true power. A vast, bubbling, well of absurd impossibilities. Until now, I had believed that there may be some science behind the magic behind the artifact. I was so, so wrong. I am not a scientist. I am a madman with the unending potential of an entire unreality coursing through my body.

Day 118 S.E.:

I see the keep, I see the Kube. At any moment, I can be anyone. Yet, I need only be one person: L.B. Chicken. A drivelling, incompetent real estate developer, and the contingency plan that I didn’t even know I had. He’s powerful enough to act unabated, wealthy enough to pull any string that hangs, and weak enough of mind to fail to notice my incursions into his being. I have placed horrible barbs into his consciousness, and though I can leave him to act as he will, I can take control at any time. Poor fool.

Day 200 S.E.:

The tomes are gathered. The ritual is prepared. Tonight, I will rip a hole through reality, then through the unholy unreality of the red realm, the sea of souls. I will build a web of inter-dimensional roads. Through Kuba, Albania, Jerusalem, Ald Farm. I will be able to be anywhere. Anyone. I will break the spine of the Union, and then I will come for the Kubans.

Day ???

Time does not pass in the sea of souls. Demons assail me, occasionally, and I devour their essences; they are delicious. They grant me knowledge learned and lost aeons ago. I grow fat on their strength. And yet… They are morsels. Crude forms, expressions of simple thought and emotion given life. There are gods here, too; grand and terrible beings that shape this place.

It has been some time since my last entry. My physical form is… losing its integrity. I am in a state of decay beyond what should be possible. My skin sloughs off at the touch. My bones creak and shudder under my weight. My eyes, it would seem, have burst and run from their sockets. Yet, I see. I move. I am unbothered by the heat of this place. Under my skin, behind my eyes, where once I had a skeleton, power swells and splits my body apart. It is horrifying and beautiful.

My travels have exposed me to knowledge. Vast knowledge. The artifact, the body, they are fragments of something far, far greater. I hold pieces of a god. No, that’s not right. I have absorbed pieces of a god. In some grand, deluded way, I am a god. I hold at my fingertips vast legions of daemons, enthralled and trapped in my service by simple pacts and rituals. There is some logic here, unscientific and nonsensical though it may be.

I’ve done it. I’ve trapped and broken up the essence of a major presence in this realm. It shall be the first of seven entities drawn into a physical form. The Seven, my Seven, shall lead the legions upon the Kube. What I need now is an anchor; something to weaken the seam between realities. I began my work through LB Chicken, in his damned Kuba new-town. Some work of architecture corrupted to my ends. Regardless, channeling my magic through him tore his form to shreds, and his corpse is no use to me. I need a new conduit.

So, reader mine, I have one final favor to ask you. Enter the Oubliette, past the Seven and their growing forms. You will know what to do.

## Conflict with Jebbics

Pride. Pride, and overconfidence, and a thirst for vengeance that remains unquenched. Justified though I feel it may have been, my hubris has interfered with my grand plan in a major way - I’ve had a portion of my soul torn from me by a simple human who, himself, was fueled by little more than a burning desire to see everything I hold dear fall apart in front of me. I could have foreseen this, of course, if I didn’t believe at the time I was impervious to this kind of trick. No matter. For a time I was furious - walls screamed, souls - once living and breathing - boiled away. Demons cowered at my rage. I gave unreality form simply so I could shake its foundations. When my anger relented after unknowable time, my tears wiped away from my face, I realized that Wilhelm Dolph Chicken, the fool, had made almost as great a misstep as I: he took a piece of me with him back to reality. Sure, he could channel a piece of my power, even harness it as his own to a degree, but it was still *me*. He brought me right into the court of the king. So my initial incursion was not the success I had hoped it to be. W.D. Chicken may as well have smuggled a nuclear bomb into the UN. When he’s awake, I see through his eyes, when he sleeps I whisper in his head. When he loses focus on keeping me suppressed, I speak through his mouth. He’s not in control, not really, he’s just a particularly resilient vessel. As I’ve chipped away at him, he’s also served as a reservoir of knowledge. The Kube, for example, is now governed by Gobby, who reports to the Jebbic Empire, an interstellar empire ruled by the Jebbic race. As is necessary for an interstellar race, they’re also remarkably technologically advanced. Reportedly, Jebbic technology closed the rift, so they may even be advanced in the ways of spirit craft. Their souls do burn brighter than those of humans or goblins, but that may simply correspond with their greater longevity and strength. They certainly aren’t strong enough to suggest that individual Jebbics are inherently talented sorcerers. I stretched the good will W.D. Chicken had as much as possible, but ultimately learned little about the Jebbics that reside there. Hell, most of the upper crust didn’t even know that there were Jebbics on the planet, they had just been deceived into believing that there had been some miraculous advances in science and some abnormal regime changes. The few that did know about the Jebbics viewed my inquisitions with distrust, Gobby in particular. Thus, I have formulated a plan: I am going to wipe out the Jebbics. I don’t know what will follow, but I know it will toss the Kube into disarray, and ultimately, that will benefit me.

*The following is an account of the battle between the Jebbics and the Violet King, captured by the sea base’s surveillance system. This tape was shown to a select few members of the Kuban Senate and to the heads of the NKVD.*

It is said that in battle, a single Jebbic is as a tempest. They tear through the battlefield in a rage that is unmatched in the world and sustain wounds that would peel back steel plates as though they were simple, shallow cuts. Legend holds that the war of Ursus Prime was fought and won by a single Jebbic soldier, who fought day in and day out, unwavering, unyielding, and completely unstoppable. The death of a single Jebbic, rare though it may be, is a tragedy unmatched in all the galaxy: it means the death of a venerable font of knowledge, a friend older than empires. The death of a single Jebbic has seen lands burned and salted. The death of a single Jebbic has seen star systems mourn. What, then, is there to be made of a massacre of Jebbics? The death of innocent Jebbics? Jebbics taken so soon, when such a concept does not even exist to those who were taken? What is there to be made of that which can bend the unyielding, and halt the unstoppable?

When the Violet King’s portal manifested in the Jebbic Seabase, the surveillance system momentarily failed. One moment: video feed of a hall. The next: a wound in reality. Baleful fire leapt forth and twisted across cold stone. Keen on averting its gaze, the surveillance system recoiled as the Violet King stepped from the portal. Shadow leapt from his form and stuck on the walls. When the first Jebbic took note of the dark, milky mass which had manifested in its presence, he did not hesitate, and assumed a fighting stance. The Violet King, still gathering his form and becoming humanoid, took a blow through his torso and stumbled backwards. The night sky spilled forth and coated the ground, and for a moment it appeared as though the struggle had already ended. Yet, when the Violet King spoke, reality listened:

**"Burn."**

The battle was hard fought and narrowly won. The damage to the Violet King was incomprehensible: holes punched clean through the infinite. A heaving, shuddering, mass of swirling shadow that stumbled and lost cohesion with every step. The Violet King, the deathless one, gasped for life. Water rushed over his burning steps, and the seabase shuddered under the unsupported weight of the ocean. The Violet King went as quickly as he had come.