Niketas Vitelli XIV

Niketas Vitelli is the current Emperor of All Ocem, having taken the throne after the sudden death of his uncle some years ago. The third in line for the throne, Niketas spent his youth as something of an adventurer, travelling out to the far-flung reaches of the Empire and to the lands across the sea where few Ocemi feet had ever stood. His easy charm and way with a quill lead to his scrolls depicting his travels being copied and in high demand in the cities of Greater Ocem, though some of the grizzled veterans in the legions regarded his stories of conquest in far away lands as fanciful.

Following the deaths of his father, brother and uncle in close succession, Niketas found himself coming to power in an excellent position: beloved by the educated men of the cities for his travel works and known to the common folk of the towns and trade stations along the roads of the Empire, Niketas had a grand coronation, where he was joined by his great friend Theotokos, the Patriarch of the Church of Sol Imperii whom he had shared a ward with in his formative years.

The first few years of Niketas' reign felt like an extension of his days of travel and adventure. The Thousand Cuts continued around the Empire, with raids and incursions from areas where the tread of the Ocemi Legions was not well known, but Niketas would march a legion up to the threat and easily dispatch them. Theotokos funded his adventures from the pot of the Church: Niketas' soldiers wore the finest armour and rode exotic horses, imported from the lands across the sea, and their enemies fled before the sight of his banners.

Beloved by the military for his generosity - for their wages had all but doubled under his reign - Emperor Niketas increasingly had to put pressure on the satrapies of the Ocemi Empire to produce more and more in order to fund his lavish investments in both the military and the arts. The satrapy of Velik in particular was hard-pressed, for they produced the vast majority of metal that was processed at the Beggar's Teeth for both sale and use by Ocemi soldiers. Enacting increasingly harsh quotas, the people of Velik were forced to dig so deep that they unearthed and communed with something that the Church of Sol Imperii later decreed to be an unforgivable cardinal sin.

Riding out once again with the greatest army assembled in living history, the Emperor's judgement was simple and cruel - that all Velik must be destroyed and scourged from memory. Enjoyed effortless success against the vast outnumbered and inferior Veliki forces, their capital was soon encircled and on the brink of ruin.

Few know what happened that day, though some claim a terrible storm of darkest magic briefly wreathed the once-fertile lands of the traitor-satrapy, transforming it into a greying waste fit only for vultures. Above ground, nothing of Velik remained -- though when Emperor Niketas road back to Great Ocem, he brought home an imperial army decimated beyond all comprehension, with conservative estimates claiming that maybe even a third of his total forces, which accounted for much of the Ocemi Empire's legions, were left behind.

Though ostensibly the war was won and Velik was seemingly crushed, Niketas saw a reverse in his fortunes from that point. The legions no longer trusted him, and the citizens of Ocem (many of whom had family in those lost legions) started calling for answers. To make matters worse, his source of financial aid would soon be cut off: the once-libertine Theotokos became a devout man, dedicated to his faith and adopting the monikor Cauterised-Of-Sin, and began to give the churches' money away, enacting a series of reforms to drive out any would-be politicians and to militarise sections of the Church, as if to compensate for the failures of the military.

Feeling isolated from the Church and with the faith of his devoted legions shaken, the once-beloved Niketas Vitelli XIV now sits uneasily on his imperial throne.