Sigvald the Cruel

## Sigvald

The centuries have been kind to Prince Sigvald

**Sigvald the Cruel** is one of the Perfect Princes.

## Personality

Prince Sigvald is an incredibly charismatic leader, but a cruel one. He is known to place ironic handicaps on his subordinates.

### Quotes

* "Any freedom held by another man could be used to enslave me."
* "I am long-lived, but I know I am mortal. I will not live what time I have under constraint. I want to be able to tell a hundred men to leap from a cliff, and for them to do it because they fear what I'll do to those who remain."

## History

*This section is incomplete. You can help The Aeldrum Wiki by expanding it*.

Sigvald came to power around the year 230 A.U., unseating and murdering his predecessor, Prince Leth the Conniving, who himself had seized the vacant seat of Prince Vakhtang the Pious some three decades prior. Some whisper that Sigvald, once Leth's Vizier, struck when it became clear that Leth would not allow him to partake of the secrets of his unnatural longevity. Disgusted than any man should decide whether he lived or died, Sigvald vowed to amass absolute power and, of course, enslave any who might have done the same to him.

Sigvald embarked on a program of terror and consolidation of power, making him the sole ruler of the most direct route from Naga Space to the wider cosmos. As the Gate-Keeper of the Naga, Sigvald resented and feared the attention of his ophidian overlords and sought wherever possible to manage his domain in secret. His expansionist motives brought him into frequent conflict with other magnates of the Naga hierarchy, most notable Prince Nidev the Vain.

The jewel in Sigvald's crown was the Station, an ancient piece of Mage Imperium infrastructure which Sigvald and Nidev discovered simultaneously, but which Sigvald successfully maneuvered the Knights Mercantile into claiming and neutralizing on his behalf. Sigvald would later betray and expel the Knights Mercantile in a brazen grab for power, which netted him a majority of the KM's expeditionary fleet in the region and the (unwilling) technical advice of some of its senior officers. These resources (particularly a KM warship and two frigates which were swiftly refitted with artifacts from the Station) allowed him to overcome the delicate balance of power at the Naga frontier and resume his expansionism.

The Station provided both an enormous trove of technological artifacts (including its exorbitantly valuable adamantine plating) and a platform from which Banshee the Blind, Sigvald's prodigal son, would launch the invasion of Nidev's territories on behalf of his father, at the helm of the KM fleet that Banshee had betrayed.

Following the collapse of the Naga Empire under the strains of the Mind Virus, Sigvald swiftly positioned himself as the main source of stability in the region, striking a bargain with the Aeldrum Trade Company through its long-standing representative in Naga space, Dion de Turenne. Under this arrangement, Sigvald would become the ATC's key partner, trading the secrets of the Station and other relics of Naga space for Aeldman weapons, technical advice and gold. As Sigvald extended his control over the region, allowing Aeldman research posts and other installations to follow in his wake, he ensured his total control of the frontiers of the "Naga Quarantine Zone," nominally in the interest of cosmic security. As Sigvald's negotiations with the Fialta Imperium and the Aeldmen during the Coalition War would demonstrate, it was his intention to control the frontier so that he could decimate not only Naga space but potentially the Pin Jump and its neighbors by releasing the Mind Virus should his regime collapse.

During the Coalition War, the betrayal of the Brass Cities against the Serene Duchy of Aeldrum led to a wave of automata pouring into Sigvald's territory. Sigvald's preferred terror tactics, relying on psionic agents and demoralizing technical horrors, proved ineffective against the gleaming hordes; while able to delay their advance using more conventional means, Sigvald lacked the industrial and military organizational capabilities to effectively fight a war of attrition. In desperation, he collaborated with the Fialta Imperium (after sussing out and brutally countering an attempted Shantaran-backed coup against him), helping them to seize key Aeldman installations and ultimately giving them access to the occult resources to effect the Turning of the Pin Jump, which both cut the Pin Jump off from Celestial Space and powered the destruction of the Aeldman research world of New South Saldan, suspending the Aeldman null bomb program for the remainder of the war.

The eventual defeat of the Fialta Imperium and the withdrawal or chaotic dissolution of the leaderless Brass Cities armies (cut off by the Turning from their Porcelain Lords) left Sigvald in a delicate position with his former Aeldman allies, but amidst the haste to conclude the costly war, he successfully maneuvered himself into formal recognition of his "Kingdom" among the victorious powers of the Coalition. Following the Coalition War, Sigvald's domain continued much as before, languishing under his reign of terror with the tacit backing of an indifferent Aeldman government, which preferred his reliable stagnation and ready offers of occult sites to the risks of regional conflict.

The Bank of Valdos, seeking largely to destablize Naga Space and distract Aeldman resources from the First Confederate Scramble, attempted to effect the assassination of Sigvald by his son Banshee the Blind. Banshee had also turned against the Coalition, leading an insurrection against the Shantine garrison with great success at the Second Siege of Korinth, but unlike his father had chosen to remain in the service of the Fialta Imperium, taking a bride from the second-rung of the Imperial family and assuming the title of Prince. The attempt by Banshee on his father's life was a disastrous failure, ending in the son's death.

King Sigvald had hoped for Banshee to overtake him but, disgusted by his self-abasement first in serving the Fialta and second in wasting himself on an arena battle at Sigvald's command rather than attacking his father directly, allowed his son to be slain by one of his prize horrors, the Composite Man Naga. Though reluctantly victorious, Sigvald's aged body was swiftly failing and he did not long survive his son; the shadowy power struggle among his surviving heirs ended in the successful takeover of the region by his children Narev and Veran, with the presumptive intervention of Aeldman intelligence to preempt a civil war.