Writings and Words of the Truest King

With the heightened engagement of the Truest King in the Broken Kingdom following the Great War, his people have begun to note down his commentary when it is shared. While the authenticity of some reports is questioned, there are more than a few who seek their fortune in recording his words for posterity.

## Regarding Himself

*"I spent a hundred years asking myself, 'Who am I?' and then I spent a thousand trying to find the answer. The conclusion I've reached is that one should not ask stupid questions expecting profound answers."*

"*The cost of immortality is that your existence becomes a parade of death. During the war I saw more death than most men see in a million life times. This has given me a new appreciation for life itself and thus I've chosen to embrace it, to live my life to the fullest each day in tribute to all of those who had their time to do so denied to them by our enemies."*

*"I use to hold myself apart from my people. I could explain why but suffice to say the war taught me differently. I saw my people die in droves, and though they will be reborn to fight and live again, I now fight by their side. Every enemy I cut down is a life on my hands, that no death shall ever come to wash away. I have an ocean of blood spilt by my blade that would even make the Faceless ill. That is my burden to bear; it was needed to forge what we have today. And now that we have this, it is needed to maintain it for as many of my people as can benefit from it. Every man I cut down, every blow I take, is one less of our people in a grave before their time. It is one more year one of ours has to hone himself to excellence, to make his mark on the world's memory, to ensure that when he enters the Grey he shall not be forgotten but reborn to live this wonderful life of ours again. It used to be said my presence could be felt on the fields of righteous battle in a subtle way. We are not a subtle people and my presence shall no longer be so. That I vow to the People of Stone."*

*"What is it like to be Immortal? I want you to close your eyes. Picture the first woman you loved. Picture your mother's face, your father's. Picture the first man you killed. Picture the first loved one you lost. Picture the friends you have who have fallen. Now, imagine seeing their faces in those of strangers centuries removed. Think of the haunting of living so long as to see the rebirth and know they have forgotten who they were though they live on. Now that is the gentle, warm, fuzzy part of it. You know their essence continues through the ages. The terror of it is the faces you can no longer remember, the people who were so vitally important to you, that you no longer recollect. Imagine knowing you had a mother, a wife, children, who you loved and cherished and whom thinking of you still feel as strongly now as you did two thousand years ago, and you can no longer see their faces even in the deepest recesses of your mind and dreams."*

*"I'd like you think on this one point. By the time I sequestered myself from most of public life I had stopped naming my horses for a hundred years because I could think of no name which I had not used before. I've lived twice as long since then. How many noble steeds have borne me into battle and their death? I've lived for over four hundred and forty generations, guiding and fighting for these lands. I've likely ridden over eleven thousand horses! And you wonder why our people emphasize the quality of their beasts and take such great care in how they make their saddles. I'm half surprised we are not known as the Horse Lords outside of the kingdom."*

## Regarding Morality

*"There was an agreement brokered among us, an agreement we called the Barren Soil treaty. This agreement has been breached repetitively by the very people in this chamber who demanded it! Need I remind you of what comes when the ability to kill becomes more tied to the weapon than the wielder? The very ones of you who would castigate me for denying my subjects self-rule or advancements in technology would turn lose the most terrible of things upon this world. When I swing a sword, when any of my Riders swing a sword, they know who and what they are swinging at. Krak powder, Dust, Corpsebloom: these are weapons of devastation which violated our agreement and you could not control who they struck. Noncombatants, men, women, and children, even the beasts of the world have suffered and died at the hands of you who have utilized these and similar weapons. Which of you would take a child, and disembowel him on a whim for being in the wrong field? Any of you who have used those krak powder mines have done just that. Somewhere there is a child who was blown asunder to die in agony, for being in the wrong place. Every person who dies to these things is a person being tortured by you. You had it in your power to deny these things to the world; you have chosen instead to expose them to it. Each one of you has the same guilt on your head, the same blood on your hands, as if you had stretched them on the rack and cut them to bits yourselves. Remember that the next time you think any deployment of these weapons is worthy. Lands can be resettled, cities can be rebuilt, new homelands can be found. There was never a need for these things, there will never be a need; any further development will, as we agreed so long ago, do naught but increase the butcher's bill and increase the suffering of the mortals who are our charges!"* -Speaking to the Undying Council

## On Women

*"Everything I know about women you can learn yourself by asking yourself that same question."*

*"Why would you ask me that? Why would you think I would answer that? Have you no sense or dignity?"*

*"Over the course of twenty two hundred centuries, I've fallen in love.. truly in love perhaps five times. I recite the names of those women each night before I put myself to slumber. I keep their portraits sealed and view them when the slightest detail goes astray in my mind. I watched each of them grow old and die. I watched our children grow old and die. To me those lifetimes are short, sweet memories. I can tell you now though, every smile, every laugh, every lingering touch was worth the years of sorrow, the yearning for those lost loves that I still feel even now. Be as hearty and valorous to the woman you are thinking of, lad, as you are on the fields of battle. The prize is worth the contest."*

*"The women of the Kingdom are the greatest prize one could win. They're hale, hearty, and not given to the games encouraged for women among other cultures. This comes at the price of having to culture the strength to handle them. By all means, while you are welcome to pursue a wife while you are in these lands but I advise you to remember that while she may follow you out of the Kingdom, you'll never get the Kingdom out of her blood. Do you have the strength in your bones and heart to handle a woman who will draw steel and fight to the death to fight her children with the fury of any ten men of a lesser people? Are you brave enough to bed a woman who may turn that blade on you if you do wrong by her? And don't think that the noblewomen are any softer than the farm girls; they'll just cost you more to keep them happy."*

*"After all this time, I believe I've sampled women of every sort. I can tell you that what makes the woman is not her form although these things are pleasing. What makes her is the nature of her soul, the crux of who she is. Some think my Companions are simply a harem, and while some fill that role there is more to it. Each bearer of the Cross has a strength to her, and those strengths are varied as the women are. However, each of them share one strength, they are strong enough in who they are to look their very god in the eye and tell him no. Immortals and mortals; man, woman, and child alike need the strength to stand for themselves and they need those around them with the strength to refuse them. I am strong, the strongest in these lands. The women I surround myself with stand up to me. Let that mark who they are before you suggest they are no more than privileged slaves again."* - Refuting an accusation that he keeps sex slaves

*"Why tolerate these things you ask? Boobs."*

## On Reality

*"Being insightful is realizing that the truth of what you see is different from what you see. Wisdom is realizing that it doesn't matter."*

*"I've contemplated if it would not be better for all of humanity to be united under the Goran before they get a chance to become capable of anything worse than what we've seen. At the very least the Tallet, Circle, and Kushan have demonstrated a willingness to breach treaties they once understood the importance of. It may be that life united under the Fire God would be objectively better than what we would bring ourselves to fighting to avoid it. Then again, what would life be like if all were united under me? My hubris hasn't grown enough to fully contemplate that and it is a line of thought I suggest you and I both avoid."*

*"Peoples who claim themselves pragmatic say that only things which are real should matter. That the ideals of honor, truth, freedom, service, and loyalty are secondary to things which are real and tangible. I ask you to define to me what is real. Is it what we see? It is simple enough to demonstrate that even our eyes can deceive us. Is it what we know? How many times have you misheard or remembered something different than how others recalled it? I've had wise men tell me that the definition of reality is all whose existence persists. I challenge then that how could you be real to one like me? You live fifty years, after I've lived five thousand will I still consider your existence to have been persistent? Your entire life, even if you spend it every day with me will eventually be but a single night's dream in comparison to the days I number and further, like a dream once fondly remembered, the memory itself will fade to oblivion. After all that we've built crumbles to dust before the grindstone of time, all that will remain of you and who I am today are those same ideas that others disregard. The valor of your life, the honor of your actions, the ideals by which every Knight lives will echo down through eternity. I know this because I will be there to live those ideals still. So you tell me, if the only thing in this world which persists are those ideals others consider intangible who is the one deluding themselves as to what is truly real and of worth? The next time one of the Circle doctors berates you that your blood isn't worth our ways and our ideals, remember this conversation and know the truth of your own immortality as long as you stand firm and unyielding against such cowardly talk."*

*"There is no such thing as too much cheese."*

## On Religion/Godhood

*"The faith of my people comes down to a simple message. Live as I live, do as I do. You will find no hypocrisy in it. I ask only for them to give what I give, no less and no more."*

*"If you need a demonstration of my divinity, lift my blade. Once you've done so, if you can do so, drive it through my heart. If what comes from that doesn't convince you, then nothing will. I am undying, I am invulnerable, I am super human in strength, lifespan and endurance. I am the supernatural made flesh; what is that if not divine?"*

*"Some would say that our faith is a falsehood, designed to exploit my people and keep me empowered. The faith of the Kingdom does the opposite; it empowers the people to rise up beyond what they were. Each reaches to their best potential. Perhaps it will be that some day I am displaced by one who has reached beyond my own potential, but what I will guarantee is that when the war which is coming arrives my people will be the most ready and the most enduring. I speak of a war which will make the Great War be a fond memory of sibling rivalry. That war draws ever closer as the nations of mortals with their absent gods rise in power. The guidance I offer my people guides them away from self destruction. The mortals who turn their back on that guidance, who embrace the mad mutterings of deluded soothsayers that praise absent ethereal beings, do not have that guidance. Myself and the other Immortals who have retained ourselves, we know what lies inside the Box of Wonders and while many good things can come out of it we are aware of the bad things and the misery that can exit it once opened as well. I assure you, the Corpsebloom was a taste of what waits should the nations of man choose to open the box fully."*

*"For though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I shall fear no evil for I have a distinctly unfair advantage."*

## On the Battlefield

*"We're about to relieve a large number of villages of their idiots."*

*"I beseech you to show mercy to our enemy! Do not make them go home to those shrewish merkins they call wives!"*

*"RIDERS! We sit here outnumbered seven to one! Is it not time the Tallet gave us a fair battle?! I was beginning to think I should dress you in ballgowns to give them a fighting chance!"*

*"As I look down our lines I am moved by the sheer charity of those assembled! For not only do you fight to protect those who could not turn this tide alone, but you are about to commit a most generous act by liberating the women of our foes from the yoke of such filth as the enemy command has gathered before us! Cowards one and all who hide behind long sticks and fire more sticks rather than fight like men are not deserving to share the field with us! Now, join me, and we'll correct this injustice!"*

*"Judging by the fine crop of distinguished individuals gathered by our enemy here today, I can only imagine that tonight will be windy as the goats of their land let out a collective sigh of relief!"*

*"mmmmgrrrrrgphhhh... Worth."*

*"You've a rare talent and a strong head on your shoulders lad. Try not to get killed. I can't promote you if you get killed."*

## On Death

*"Now we lay the victorious fallen to rest, and rest it is for when their essence has moved through the Grey, they shall rise again as new men and women. Once again shall they walk among us, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters. Once again will they raise their head proudly, and give their defiance to the fate which awaits. They lived with excellence, they fought with honor, they died with valor. Now let us drink a final toast to our friends and remember their names until we meet them next!"*

*"Lesser peoples fear Death. The People of Stone court her as surely as any man does a woman, and before she is allowed to take them she must moan out like a spent whore because our people do not merely embrace Death; they ride her into the Grey like a pale charger into their final battle!"*

*"Entertain if you will, how it is that each Immortal discovered that they are indeed immortal? Surely there must be some of the greatest stories of tragic humor to be found in those tales."*