Wicked Kings
The Wicked Kings
By tying their life forces together, the trio of monarchs—henceforth referred to as the Wicked Kings, or just the Kings—are constantly aware of one another’s wellbeing. Pain felt by one is felt by the other two, as is pleasure; if one is threatened or hurt (or doing the horizontal waltz, if you catch my drift), the other two experience the same sensation and can react appropriately. Should one of them killed, the other two will die as well. So the Kings have a rather vested interest in keeping one another alive. Furthermore, their lifelink has allowed them to avoid doing something all tyrants and despots must do at one time or another: sleep. You can’t kill a gestalt entity when two-thirds of it is awake, as no small number of unsuccessful assassins have discovered.
Their lifelink also gives the Kings access to each other’s skills and knowledge, so if you’ve met (or earned the ire of) one of the Kings, the other two are aware of you as well, even if they may not know the context. That’s because the one thing they don’t share—or so it is believed—is thought. Those remain private, which has lead in no small part to the Kings’ extreme suspicion of one another.
It’s no great secret that the Wicked Kings hate one another. Human beings aren’t meant to live as long as they have. The magic that ties their lives together has dramatically slowed their ageing—they age perhaps one year in ten—and humans who artificially extend their lives out that long tend to go a bit batty (take your stereo-typically daft but genius wizard, for example). To say the Kings have grown apart is an understatement. They didn’t exactly care for each other to begin with—theirs was an alliance of necessity—and that was before they’d been magically bonded together for 400 years. Breaking the bond is not an option—if the bond breaks, they die—so they’re stuck with one another, and stuck in each other’s heads. It’s why they bicker and spew so much. They’re not only each other’s only peers; they’re their only competition, and they take any opportunity to undermine and embarrass one another. Like the erstwhile Middle Kingdoms, the only time they come together is when they’re facing an external threat. In the last century, no credible threat to their power has arisen, and as a result their interactions have been especially testy.
The Wicked Kings’ domain encompasses nearly all of humanity. Only two independent human states remain: Golden Valley, a small mountain-ringed state south of the Wicked Kingdoms that owes its autonomy to its Switzerland-esque geography, and to Valmarrogandrex, the ancient guardian dragon who dwells there (mainly the dragon); and Transis, the mighty city-state trade port far to the east that is accessible only by sea or caravan through the Afterlands, conquered by the barbarian king Karn the Unpleasant. The Kings’ main goal—apart from preserving their rule—is to conquer these final two holdouts.
The Kings make their home in the Wicked Citadel, a colossal fortress in the heart of Lassax on the River Frael. They have sequestered themselves here in their hidden audience chamber, and it is from here that they pilot the various puppets they’ve spread across the world to do their bidding.