For long centuries, Empresses have ruled Sirania. They are women chosen by the Divine Emperor to become his brides. When an old Empress dies, a group of Seekers is dispatched, searching for the Emperor’s will based on sacred signs. After a brief period of interregnum, the Seekers find the chosen girl and ceremoniously bring her to the Palace of Sirgon. The Empress receives an education and upbringing and assumes the throne. For many generations, the Empresses ruled in peace and prosperity, but events of the last few years have significantly shaken the foundations of Siranian society.
After many clashes and mysterious events—into which few have insight—it has come to pass that two Empresses now rule. Both are exceptional personalities in their own right, but only their joint rule could halt the deep crisis that recently tormented the entire empire.
THE GREY EMPRESS
She is one of the two Empresses of present-day Sirania and the co-ruler of Siva. Although the Grey Empress is younger than Siva by two hundred years and is still a girl by the reckoning of a human lifespan, during recent years she has seen things witnessed by few mortals, thereby gaining the insight of great monarchs.
In appearance, the Grey Empress is a comely girl of smaller stature. Her skin is grey, like the color of ash, and her hair is black as the smoke of an extinguished fire. Her eyes, however, are clear, and their brilliance captivates all her servants and the envoys of other kings.
SIVA
Siva is the second of the two current Empresses of Sirania. She is a woman of tall and noble stature; her hair is like bluish silver, and her face is as if carved from marble. Few realize that this manipulator was once the dreaded tyrant of Sirania and that she returned from death with the help of dark sorcery.
Súlin, Omerin, and other player characters met Siva a relatively long time ago, and through mutually rendered services, they gained her sympathy and trust. Siva carries herself cautiously before them, and though she is now Empress, she poses her orders more as friendly requests.
A brief account of her past:
Siva is considered one of the most controversial figures in Siranian history and the present day.
It is said that her life’s journey began in a tiny mountain village in the forests beneath Mount Svargas, which towers in the very center of Sirania like a celestial pillar. Siva, who then bore another name now forgotten, was an eight-year-old girl when the old Empress Siranna died and the group of Seekers set out to find a new successor for the throne in Sirgon and a future bride for the Eternal Emperor.
After a long search and much uncertainty, the group of lords finally arrived at the threshold of the cottage where Siva lived with her parents. they demanded their young daughter so that she might become the Empress of the entire Siranian Empire—of whose size and power neither she nor her parents had any inkling. The eight-year-old girl then sat upon the Crystal Throne in Sirgon and, with a solemn face and wide-open eyes, assumed rule under the guidance of a quiet voice that only she could hear with perfect clarity—the guidance of the Emperor’s voice.
That was more than two hundred years ago.
The young Empress—the youngest ruler on Qurand and the youngest chosen Empress in Siranian history—displayed an unexpected talent for politics, organization, and magic. During ten years under the guidance of teachers from various disciplines, she excelled in everything for which she became famous to later generations: primarily in several schools of combat-oriented, manipulative, and psychically focused magic, in the arts of intrigue and espionage, and other fields. She soon became not only the Empress but also a respected and leading member of several schools of knowledge and magic.
In the early years, her reign was like a miracle—the state flourished, grew strong, and developed. Siva boldly embarked on many architectural, cultural, and commercial plans, and under her patronage, most of them succeeded brilliantly. Her exceptional personality won wide sympathy, and the people revered her as a true goddess. At that time, she was the most powerful monarch on the face of the earth, and she was well aware of it. Her style of governance gradually began to change, just as she herself was changing.
In a short time, she managed to transform Sirania into a tightly organized state entity; she restricted many freedoms and significantly strengthened the army. Throughout the long decades of her reign, few noticed the changes, for they were individual and cautious—but eventually, they became undeniable. Finally, Siva purposefully provoked a war with the Southern Kingdoms and conquered a vast region west of the river Ma Sarit, which includes the famous city of Arkagas, which defected to Sirania at the decisive moment. Recorded history, however, does not capture all the behind-the-scenes moves, the courses and outcomes of which were under Siva’s control.
After sixty years of her rule, her associates began to find it strange that since the age of twenty, she had shown no signs of aging, which is natural for any mortal and thus for any White Siranian. Many suspicions arose; among others, her incredible talent for magic forced many to claim that she was actually an albino Black Siranian, or a demon in human form. At that time, internal pressures intensified, and the secret game played for years began to surface. The lords of Sirania, in agreement with the rulers of neighboring lands, feared that this totalitarian Empress would harass them with her rule forever and that she would use her sorcery to stay alive unnaturally long.
Every year, coups, assassinations, and upheavals of varying scales were organized against the person of the Empress, who grew poorer by several associates with each such action. Siva, however, refused to surrender and, without mercy, murdered and exiled everyone involved in such plots. She thus turned an incredible number of people against her, and many age-old enemies united here to face this Empress. Sirania turned into a police state, noble houses thinned alarmingly, and every corner or blind alley hid danger and conspiracy. Yet Siva could not win a war against her own aristocracy. Many times she averted an assassination at the last moment—sometimes quietly and sometimes with a clap of thunder—but finally, one succeeded.
Siva died at the hand of a nameless singer who at that time belonged to the Listeners. After the murder, she fled into the forests. There she was reborn and took the name Sivarhan, which means “She who killed Siva.”
Siva, although buried in crystal to join the ever-growing throng of the Emperor’s celestial wives, survived death through the dark magic she had mastered and utilized during her reign. She summoned herself back from death and, in the manner of the highest masters among necromancers, rose from her grave. For years she lived in hiding, pulling the strings of history, only to step back into the light of history on the day when a group of heroes-by-necessity faced a great decision. From four possibilities, the heroes chose Siva’s offer, and thus the great manipulator returned to the game and reached the throne once more.
