>>5684926>18“Live for the Dragon King!” bellows the Bastard in the True Speech, lifting a looted dwarven axe high.
“Die for the Dragon King!” agrees the Pit-guard’s Apprentice, after only a moment’s hesitation, and then his senior joins him.
“Kill for the Dragon King!” the Hunter enthuses.
“Rise with the Dragon King!” the Thief declares, lifting a fist high.
One by one, your retinue join the cry. Next shout the Merchants, with golden greed gleaming in their slit-pupiled eyes. The Cartographer is easily cowed, the Occultist surprisingly gleeful. The Hunter’s minions are quick to follow their leader into your service—YOUR service now, not the proxy-service of your shared Serpent Priest masters.
Sensing the tide—perhaps fearful, perhaps respectful, perhaps simply bound by the <Voice of the Metatron> and dazzled by the <Radiant Aura> which you unconsciously project with your swelling confidence, eventually the Translator joins the chant as well—not enthusiastically, not with the same devotion, but with submission in his heart. He sees you, and recognizes you, as King of Bloodrise, undisputed.
“LIVE!”
“DIE!”
“KILL!”
“RISE!”
>20>Uncontested kingship>BONUS: Increased loyalty, unity, and productivityThe ceremony ends—as all ceremonies must, even the most triumphant. You take a long, deep series of meditative breaths, stilling your hammering heart. You feel something move around you, through you—history? Destiny? It’s more than simple anxiety, you’re sure of it. Things are in motion—the entire world turning on a new axis in an entirely unknown and novel direction, and that axis…
Is you.
It’s terrifying and invigorating at once. Your empathic abilities absorb the excitement which you return an announcement has evoked—the sudden change in mood, the pivot of minds to the shared and utopian future you have promised. People return to work and to war, and to whatever they were doing before, but they do so with a new purpose and a renewed, redoubled vigor.
You feel it, also.
The first matter of business is to discover what has become of Blood rise in your absence—why all the dwarves, and what is the status of the war? Where lie the edges of your kingdom’s borders, and how well-defended are they?
Who will you interrogate about this?
>Agno the Kobold>The Bastard>The Pit-guard>Glowie>The Translator>Karz Throat-singer>Someone else 